74G 




Class 

Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



7 >~ 



daho^ Montana. 

§)1GHTS 





T< 



FoF^ THE_ 



C. S. MELLEN, E. L. LOMAX, 

Gen'l Traffic Manager, Gen'l Passenger Agent, 

OMAHA, NEB. 

Rand, mcnally & Co., Printers, Chicago. 



\ 



X 

V 



n m 




^j 





sen® 



IDAHO ^MONTANA 




p:;men;s o: the SECONDEDITION. 
passenger department, 



ni°n PhC 



bySTs 



c ov sum 



(pmaha, Web. 



Copyright, 1890, 

By E. L. LOMAX, General Passenger Agent, 

Union Pacific System. 

Omaha, Neb. 



*1 



\) 



(> 




%\ PR I NTERsTtt 



/- 16/ ft 



LIST OF AGENTS. 

ALBANY", N. "Y.-23 Maiden Lane— J. D. TEHBROKCK, Trnv. Pass Apt 
BOSTON, MASS.-2W Washington St.- W.8.UONDELL, New England Freight 
and Passenger Agent. * 

J. S. SMITH. Traveling Passenger Agent. 

E. M. NEWBKGIN. Traveling Freight and Passenger Agent. 

A. P. MASSE\, Passenger and Freight Solicitor 

BUFP £&h' RtJ^tI E J ch&T }« eS b- S A " I11 ' PCHISON, Trav. Pass. Agt. 
SE TH CALDWELL, Traveling Freight Agent. 

BUTTE. MON T.— C orner Main ami Broadwav General Apt 

CHEYENNE. WYO.-C W. SWEET. Freight and Ticket Agent. 

CHICA ^' £Wt^ l9 l Sout £ Cln £ k 8t.-W.H.KNIQUT, Gen'l Agt. P. and F. Dep'ts- 

T. W. YOUNG, Traveling Passenger Agent. 

W. T. HOLLY. City Passenger Agent. 
„™„~ ALFRED MORTEiNSEN & CO.. European Immigration Agts., 110 Kinzie St. 
CINCINNATI OHIO-56 West 4th St.-J 1). WELSH. Gen'l Agt. F. and P. Dep'ts. 

H. C. SMITH. Traveling Freight and Passenger Agent. 
CLEVELAND, OHIO-Kennard House.— A. G. SHEAKMAN. T. P. and P. Agt 
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.-E. D. BAXTER, Gen'l Agt D.. T. & Ft. W. rTr 
COLUMBUS. OHIO-X W. cor. Gay andHighSts.— T.C.HI KST.Tiav. Pass. Agt 
COUNCIL BLUFFS. IOWA-506 First Ave.-A. J. MANDEKSON, General Agt. 

R-^i- 9 HAMBKRLA1N - Passenger Agent, Transfer Depot. 

J. W. MAYNARD. Ticket Agent. Transfer Depot. 

A. T. ELWELL. City Ticket Agent, 507 Broadway. 
D ALLA S. TEX.-H. M. DE HART, General Agent D., T. & Ft. W. R. R. 
DENVER, COLO.-1703 Larimer St.-F. I. SMITH, Gen'l Agt. D. T. & Ft. W. R.R. 

GEO. AD\ , General Passenger Agent, Colo. Div. and " 

F. B. SEMPLE. Assistant General Pass. Agent, Colo. Div. and " 
C. H. TITUS, Traveling Passenger Agent. 

B. P. M. KIMBALL, City Ticket Agent. 

DES MOINES, IOWA-218 4th St.-E. M. FORD. Traveling Passenger Agent 
DETROIT, MICH.-62 Griswold St.-D. W. JOHNSTON, Michigan Pass. Agt. 
HELENA, MONT.-28 North Main St.— A. E. VEAZIE. Citv Ticket Agent. 
INDIANAPOLIS. IND.— Room 3 Jackson Place.-H. 6. WEBB, Traveling 

Passenger Agent. 
KANSAS CITY, MO.-9th and Broadway.— J. B. FRAWLEY, Div. Pass. Agt. 

J. B, REESE. Traveling Passenger Agent. 

F. S. HAACKE, Traveling Passenger Agent. 

H. K. PROUDKIT, City Passenger Agent. 

T. A. SHAW. TicKet Agent. 1038 Union Ave. 

A. W. MILLSPAUGH. Ticket Agent. Union Depot. 

C. A. WH1TTIER. City Ticket Agent, 528 Main St. 

LIVERPOOL. ENGLAND-23 Water St.-S. STAMFORD PARRY, General 

European Agent. 
LONDON, ENGLAND-THOS. COOK & SONS, European Passenger Agents, 

Ludgate Circus. 
LOS ANGELES. CAL. -51 North Spring St.-JOHN CLARK. Agt. Pass. Dep't. 

A. J. Hb-CHTMAN. Agent Freight Department. 
LOUISVILLE, KY.-S46 West Main St.-N. HAIGHT. Traveling Pass. Agent. 
NEW ORLEANS, LA -45 St. Charles St.-C. B. SMITH, General Agent D., T. 

D. M. REA. Traveling Agent D., T. & Ft. W. R. R 

NEW t Y ?^t^?"? -287 Broa dvvay-R. TENBROECK, General Eastern Agent. 

J. t. w ILE\ , Passenger Agent. 

F. R. SEAMAN, City Passenger Agent. 
OGDEN, U^AH-Union Depot-C. A. HENRY. Ticket Agent. 

C. E. IMItALLS, Traveling Passenger Agent. 
2££ MPIA ' WA S H -- 2d s t. Wharf .-J. C. PERCIVAL, Ticket Agent. 
OMAHA NEB.-9th and Farnam Sts.-M. J GREEVY, Trav. Pass. Agt. 

TirnMFunfeuf L A Clt ^ P as ,senger and Ticket Agent, 1302 Farnam St. 

J - K - CHAMBERS, Depot Ticket Agent, 10th and Barer Sts 

PHIIAJDELPHIA PA. -133 South 4th St.-D. E. BURLEY, Trav. Pass. Agt. 
•w%T^ r ^JaZ--J^ s LL R « j rav eling Freight Agent. 

PITTSBURG, PA. -400 Woo.i St.-jf. E. P ASS A V ANT. T. F. and P A 
t^-doJ 1 ^;^ SP^R. Traveling Freight and Passenger Agtnt. 
PORTLAND, JRE.-Cor. 3d and Oak Sts.-T. W. LEE, Gen'l Passenger Agent, 

4\»'^S)XI£,V'£ eneral Agent Traffic Department. 

HARRY YOUiNG, Traveling Passenger Agent. 
««„^^ E -°^ TAYLOR. City Ticlet Agent. Cor 1st and Oak Sts. 
PORT TQWNSEND, WASH.-Union Wharf-N. L. T1BBALS, Jr Ticket Agt 
PUEBLO. COLO.-E. R. HARDING, General Agent D., T. & Ft. W.*R R " 

ST. JOSEPH MO -F. L. LYNDE General Pass. Agent St. J. & G. I. R. R. Dir. 

»v. r\ KOBl>SO!\. Jr., General Freight Agent, St. J. & G I R R Div 

8T - ^E^T ^?r^ 2 Tr NO v rt I b « h P St - J - F AGLAR, Gen'l Agt^F. and P. D^p't. 

E. K. T 1 TTLE, Traveling Passenger Agent. 

E. S. WILLIAMS. City Passenger Agent 

C. C. KN IGHT, Freight Contracting Agent. 
SALT LAKE i CITY " UTAH-201 Main St.-J V. PARKER, Assistant General 
..___. Freight and Passenger Agent, Mountain Div. 

BAN FRANCISCO, CAL. -1 Montgomery St.-W. H. HURLBURT, Assistant 
General Passenger Agent, Mo. Riv. Div. "" 

&' F-^SkE 3 ^™^ 1 A £ ent Freight Department. 

C. L. HANN A, 1 raveling Passenger Agent. 

H. KRODSHAM. Passenger Agent. 

J. F. FUGAZI. Italian Emigrant Agent. 5 Monteomerv Ava. 
SEATTLE, WASH. -A. C. MARTIN, City Ticket .gent 

O. F. BRIGGS. Ticket Agent. Dock. e 

SIOUX CITY, IOWA-M3 Fourth St.-D. M. COLLINS General Ao-ent 

GEO. E. ABBOTT. Citv Ticket Agent. Wljl "- aa ' general Agent. 
SPOKANE FALLS, WASH.-108 Riverside Ave -PERRY GRIFFIN Passen 
gerand Ticket Agent. «»»»»», iraseen- 

TACOMA. WASH. -901 Pacific Ave.-E. E. ELLIS. Gen'l Agt. F. and P Den'ts 
TRINIDAD. COLO.-G. M.JACOBS. General Agent D.,T.I Ft W R R 
VICTORIA. B. C-100 Government St.-G. A. COOPER, Ticket Agent ' 
WHATCOM. WASH.-J. W.ALTON, Gen'l Agent Freight and Pass. Dep'ts 



J. A. S. REED, General Traveling Agent. 191 South Clark St., CHICAGO. 



ALBERT WOODCOCK, General Land Commissioner, OMAHA. NEB. 



E. L. LOMAX, JNO. W. SCOTT, 

General Passenger Agent. Ass't General Passenger Agent 

OMAHA. NEB. 



Pullman^ Palace Gar GompanJ 

Now operates this class of service on the Union Pacific 
and connecting lines. 



Double 
Berths. 



PULLMAN PALACE CAR RATES BETWEEN 



New York and Chicago 

New York and St. Louis 

Boston and Chicago 

Chicago and Omaha or Kansas City 

Chicago and Denver 

St. Louis and Kansas City , 

St. Louis and Omaha - 

Kansas City and Cheyenne • 

Council Blufts, Omaha or Kansas City and Denver 

Council Blnffs or Omaha and Cheyenne 

Council Bluffs, Omaha or Kansas City and Salt Lake City 

Council Bluffs, Omaha or Kansas City and Ogden 

Council Bluffs, Omaha or Kansas City and Butte 

Council Bluffs, Omaha or Kansas City and Portland 

C. Bluffs, Omaha or K. City and San Francisco or Los Angeles 

Cheyenne and Portland 

Denver and Leadville... 

Denver and Portland 

Denver and LosAngeles 

Denver and SanFrancisco 

Pocatello and Butte 



$ 5.00 
6.00 
5 50 
2.50 
6.00 
2.00 
2.50 
4.50 
3.50 
4.00 
8.00 
8.00 
8.50 
13.00 
13.00 
10.00 
2.00 
11.00 
11.00 
11.00 
2.00 



Drawing 
Room. 

~$l87olT 
22.00 
20.00 
9.00 
21.00 
7 00 
9.00 
16.00 
12.00 
14.00 
28.00 
28.00 
32.00 
50.00 
50.00 
38.00 

"42.66** 
42.00 
42.00 
6.00 



For a Section, Twice the Double Berth Rates will be charged. 

The Private Hotel, Dining, Hunting and Sleeping Cars of the Pullman 
Company will accommodate from 12 to 18 persons, allowing a full bed to each, 
and are fitted with such modern conveniences as private, observation and 
smoking rooms, folding beds, reclining chairs, buffets and kitchens. They are 
"■just the thing'''' for tourists, theatrical companies, sportsmen, and private 
parties. The Hunting Cars have special conveniences, being provided with 
dog-kennels, gun-racks, fishing-tackle, etc. These cars can be chartered at 
following rates per diem (the time being reckoned from date of departure 
until return of same, unless otherwise arranged with the Pullman Company) : 

Ten 3Da,3rs. 

per day. 

Private or Hunting Cars $ 35.00 

Private Cars with Buffet 30.00 

Dining Cars 30.00 

Hotel, Buffet, or 



tliaaa. 



Less 

per day. 

Hotel Cars $ 50.00 

Buffet Cars 45.00 

Sleeping Cars 40.00 

Ten Days or over, $5.00 per day less than above. 
Sleeping Cars can also be chartered for continuous trips without Jay-over 
between points where extra cars are furnished (cars to be given up at 
destination), as follows : 

Where berth rate is $1 .50, car rate will be $35.00 

« » " 2.00, " " " " 45.00 

» " " 2.50, " " " " 55.00 

For each additional berth rate of 50 cents, car rate will be increased $10.00. 
Above rates include service of polite and skillful attendants. The 
commissariat will also be furnished if desired. Such chartered cars must 
contain not less than 15 persons holding full first-class tickets, and another 
full fare ticket will be required for each additional passenger over 15. If 
chartered "per diem 1 ' cars are given up en route, chartering party must 
arrange for return to original starting point free, or pay amount of freight 
necessary for return thereto. Diagrams showing interior of these cars can 
be had of any agent of the Company. 

PULLMAN DINING CARS 

are attached to the Council Bluffs and Denver Vestibuled Ex- 
press, running daily between Council Bluffs and Denver, and to 
"The Limited Fast Mail," running daily between Council Bluffs 
and Portland, Ore. 

MEALS. 
All trains, except those specified above (under head of Pullman Dining 
Cars), stop at regular eating stations, where first-class meals are furnished, 
under the direct supervision of this Company, by the Pacific Hotel Company. 
Neat and tidy lunch counters are also to be found at these stations. 

BUFFET SERVICE. 

Particular attention is called to the fine Buffet Service offered by the 
Union Pacific System to its patrons. Pullman Palace Buffet Sleepers now 
run on trains Nos. 1, 2, 201, and 202. 



SIGHTS AND SCENES IN IDAHO 
AND MONTANA. 

Idaho is an Indian word signifying "Gem of the 
Mountains," a very appropriate term for the queenly 
young Territory. It is 410 miles long, and 257 wide 
in the extreme south, and has an area of over 55 - 
000,000 acres. There are 18,400,000 acres classed 
as mountainous; 15,000,000 agricultural lands; 7,000- 
000 acres of forests; 25,000,000 acres of grazing 
lands, and 600,000 acres of lakes. This may be 
well called an imperial domain, consisting, as it does, 
of 84,000 square miles. 

Idaho is in the same latitude as France, Switzer- 
land, and portions of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. It 
is subject to oceanic influences very similar to those 
countries, and necessarily has a somewhat similar 
climate. All this region is near enough to the Pacific 
Ocean to be very noticeably affected by its currents. 
The Union Pacific Railway will sell at greatly 
reduced rates during the summer season of 1889, a 
series of excursion tickets called " Shoshone Tours," 
covering the principal points in Idaho and Montana, 
using Pocatello and Shoshone, Idaho, as central 
points. Stop-over privileges will be given within the 
limitation of the tickets. Tickets will be good thirty 
days from date of sale. 

First Shoshone Tour: From Pocatello to Great 
Shoshone Falls and return to Shoshone Station; from 
Shoshone Station to Hailey and Guver Hot Springs 
and return to Shoshone Station, and' from Shoshone 
Station to Boise City and return to Pocatello. 

Second Shoshone Tour: From Pocatello to Soda 
Springs and return. 

Third Shoshone Tour: From Pocatello, via Beaver 
Canon, to Yellowstone National Fark and return. 

Fourth Shoshone Tour: From Pocatello to Butte 
md Helena and return. 
In doing the circuit of these tours, the traveler will 

5 



find it most advantageous to use Pocatello as a central 
point. It is a railroad town of 2,000 inhabitants, and 
lacks any particular charm in scenery or environment, 
but it is a very convenient point for headquarters 
while "doing" Idaho and Montana. The Pacific 
Hotel at the station will be found first-class in every 
particular. At Pocatello, connections are made with 
Montana on the north, south to Ogden, and east and 
west on the Portland Main Line of the Union 
Pacific. 

The Pocatello town-site bill passed Congress 
September 1, 1888, ratifying the treaty of May 27, 
1887. A bill was also passed February 23, 1889, rati- 
fying the treaty of May 14, 1880, whereby 350,000 
acres of land were ceded to the public domain. This 
tract covers the southern portion of the Fort Hall 
Reservation, taking in McCammon Station on the 
Union Pacific Railway. This magnificent tract is 
now ready for Government survey, and, when thrown 
open to settlers, will furnish fine homesteads for 
thousands of people. 

The first tour is from Pocatello to Shoshone Station, 
and from there by stage to Great Shoshone Falls, 
the wonder of this continent. 

GREAT SHOSHONE FALLS. 

It is a three hours' run from Pocatello to Shoshone 
Station. Not very promising looks the small but 
energetic town, and rather desolate the miles of sage- 
brush that stretch away to the southward, and it is 
twenty-five miles from the railway track to the Falls. 
The method of travel is either by stage-coach or 
private conveyance. Good teams there are in abun- 
dance, and the distance is made in three and one-half 
hours. But after one has driven the allotted time, 
there are no signs of the Falls, the same desert 
stretches around, and a purple mountain chain in the 
far south seems to be the ultimate goal. Within the 
last mile or so, a few lava ridges have sprung up, and 
passing suddenly around one of these, we find our- 
selves in a natural gate, and there below, a sheer 1,200 
feet, lies the Snake river, and then we hear, for the 
first time, the music of the Falls. A steep road brings 
us down to the ferry. The water here, 200 yards 
above the Falls, is over 200 feet deep, and of a green- 
ish color. The ferry is a very substantial affair 
7 



worked by an under-water wire cable, and another 
safety wire cable above, reaching from bank to bank. 
The cozy hotel is all that could be desired in cuisine 
and menage, and, at the very door, one stands and 
looks down at the falls. Shoshone differs from 
every other water-fall in this or the old country. 
It is its lonely grandeur that impresses one so 
deeply; all of the other historic places have the 
adjuncts of civilization, and one is almost overshad- 
owed by a city while in their presence. The encroach- 
ments of men have taken away from the charm of 
nature. But Shoshone is as lonely as when first this 
rushing river sprang through those towering canon 
walls. The height of the chasm above and below 
the Falls varies from 1,050 to 1,200 feet, and there is 
eighteen miles of this gorge. The fall proper meas- 
ures 950 feet across, and the Bridal Veil, which is only a 
few yards back of the great fall, 125 feet. Down 
through this appalling rent, the river plunges, takes a 
flying leap of eighty-two feet at first, and then falling 
thunderously 210 feet into the boiling basin below.. It 
is three miles up the river to Twin Falls; six miles to 
Blue Lake, a charming bit of water seventy-five feet 
deep and as clear as crystal; one-half mile to the 
Vaulted Dome; one-half mile to the Locomotive Cave; 
a mile and a quarter to the lower Cascade Fall; and 
one and one-half miles to the Devil's Corral. The 
hotel is situated on the bank overlooking the Great 
Falls not twenty feet from the brink, and affords a 
view of Bridal Veil, Bridal Train, Natural Mill Race 
Falls, Eagle Rock, and Bell's Island. 

One sunset at this enchanted spot will never be 
forgotten. The day began to die, and then came a 
wonderful display. As the sun went down, the sky 
flushed into manifold colors — there were bars of 
violet, crimson, and delicate shadings of pink and 
salmon. For a few moments, the sun hung over the 
great chasm below the Falls, flooding the majestic 
canon walls with warm glows, and lighting up the 
Falls with surpassing brilliancy ; the river flowed 
beneath, restless and seething after its mighty conflict. 
Down the red orb went behind the western cliff, and 
great flame-bursts and banners, many-hued, witnessed 
his departure. There was a pause — and then the 
pageant dissolved; cool amber grays crept across the 
dome and deepened into shadow; another moment 

8 



the day was done, and starlight upon us. But at 
night, the place is haunted. The wave circles of 
sound are recurrent — at least two or three are — that 
one especially which resembles the thunder of a railway 
train at full speed. It will come roaring by and die 
away only to return again and again. The mystery 
and majesty of this great organ volume of sound are, 
at times, appalling. Remember, that the one solid 
theme of the thunder of the Falls never ceased — that 
was permanent and unvarying — but upon this monot- 
onous theme were played a thousand variations. Once 
there was a steady tramp, as of a battalion of soldiers 
marching strongly and steadily together. This died 
away, and then two voices were heard, very far off, 
but distinct as if engaged in angry altercation; 
these sank down and the room became full of vague 
and shadowy whisperings, then the refrain would 
break out: clinkety-clank! clinkety-clank! ca-den, ca- 
den, boom, boom — boom, boom, boom (marching 
time). It was too nerve-trying, and we opened the 
window wide; the moonlight fell full on the falls and 
lingered on the rent and ghastly sides of the canon 
walls. A faint recurrence could be detected in the 
heavy bass movement of the symphony, if one may 
so call it; but otherwise, there was nothing more than 
the powerful swish and roar of the water; but many 
a time through the night we heard those haunting 
voices, and weird, uncanny sounds. 

Across the deep, green water we go again in safety; 
up the narrow road along the face of the cjiff, and once 
more stand in the magnificent portal and look back. 
Serenely tower the canon walls in the still summer 
air ; placid and calm the river below ; the thunder of 
the cataract heard dimly around to the right; golden 
sunshine falling tenderly on the torn and gashed 
outline of mountain wall and dreaming river — a dozen 
steps through the sharp defile, and the picture 
vanishes; there are no mighty deeps — no river, no 
gleam of falling splendor — the waste of the desert 
and the dreary miles of sage-brush creep away to the 
dim horizon on every side — addio, Shoshone, addio. 

The character of the country through which the 
railway traveler passes in Southern and Eastern Idaho 
is adapted to repel rather than attract. The vast 
stretches of lava fields and sage-brush plains become 
monotonous in the extreme; yet amid Idaho's placid 

2M 9 




GREAT SHOSHONE FALLS, IDAHO. 
Reached via the Union Pacific Ry. 



10 



lakes, rushing rivers, and rugged mountains, may be 
found many a romantic scene. Rocks piled mountain 
high, canons a thousand feet deep, through which 
streams rush, and roar, and foam, cataracts leaping 
from rock to rock, tossing their spray aloft, somber 
forest scenes beneath towering trees, where foliage is 
so dense as to leave a twilight dimness at mid-day — 
these are some of the characteristics of the landscapes 
of imperial Idaho. Chief among all, however, are 
the Great Shoshone Falls of Snake river. 

"The three great falls of America," says Clarence 
King, "Niagara, Shoshone, and Vosemite, all happily 
bearing Indian names, are as characteristically different 
as possible. There seems little left for a cataract to 
express." 

The Shoshone Falls have been called the Niagara of 
the West. The title is not a fortunate one, as these 
falls have a superior scenery peculiarly their own. 
They are higher than Niagara, though during most of 
the year there is less volume of water. Probably the 
best description is that written by Mr. King himself, 
from which we make copious extracts without further 
apology. "A few miles in front, the smooth surface 
of the plain was broken by a rugged zigzag line of 
black, which marked the further wall of the Snake 
Canon. A dull, throbbing sound greeted us. Its 
pulsations were deep, and seemed to proceed from the 
ground beneath our feet. Leaving the cavalry to 
bring up the wagon, my friend and I galloped on, and 
were quickly upon the edge of the cafion wall. 

"We looked down into abroad, circular excavation, 
three-quarters of a mile in diameter, and nearly 1,000 
feet deep. East and north, over the edges of the 
canon, we looked across miles and miles of the Snake 
Plain, far on to the blue boundary mountains. The wall 
of the gorge opposite us, like the cliff at our feet, 
sank in perpendicular bluffs, nearly to the level of the 
river, the broad excavation being covered by rough 
piles of black lava and rounded domes of rock. A 
horizon as level as the sea; a circling wall, whose 
sharp edges were here and there battlemented in huge, 
fortress-like masses; a broad river, smooth and un- 
ruffled, flowing quietly in the middle of the scene, and 
then plunging into a labyrinth of rocks, tumbling over 
a precipice 220 feet high, and moving westward in a 
still, deep current, to disappear behind a black 
promontory. 

11 




12 



" It is a strange, savage scene — a monotony of pale 
blue sky, olive and gray stretches of desert, frowning 
walls of jetty lava, deep beryl-green river stretches, 
reflecting here and there the intense solemnity of the 
cliffs, and in the centre a dazzling sheet of foam. In 
the early morning light, the shadows of the cliffs were 
cast over half the basin, defining themselves in sharp 
outline here and there on the river. Upon the foam 
of the cataract, one point of the rock cast a blue 
shadow. Where the river flowed around the western 
promontory, it was wholly in shadow and of a deep 
sea-green. A scanty growth of trees fringed the brink 
of the lower cliffs overhanging the river. Dead bar- 
renness is the whole sentiment of the scene. The 
mere suggestion of trees clinging here and there along 
the walls serves rather to heighten than to relieve the 
forbidding gloom of the place. Nor does the flashing 
whiteness where the river tears itself among the rocky 
islands, or rolls in spray down the cliff, brighten the 
aspect. In contrast with its brilliancy, the rocks seem 
darker and more wild. 

"The descent of 1,000 feet from our standpoint to 
the level of the river above the falls has to be made 
by a narrow 7 winding path among rough ledges of lava. 
We were obliged to leave our wagon at the summit, 
and pack down the camp equipment and photographic 
apparatus upon carefully-led mules. By mid-day we 
were comfortably camped on the margin of the left 
bank, just above the brink of the falls. My tent was 
pitched upon the edge of the cliff directly overhanging 
the rapids. From my door, I looked over the cata- 
ract, and, whenever the veil of mist was blown aside, 
could see for a mile down the river. 

" The lower half of the canon is excavated in a 
volcanic formation of red and gray rock. It is over 
this material that the Snake falls. Above the brink, the 
whole breadth of the river is broken by a dozen small 
volcanic islands, which the water has carved into fan- 
tastic forms; rounding some into low domes, sharpen- 
ing others into mere pillars, and now and then wear- 
ing into deep caves. At the very brink of the fall, a 
few twisted evergreens cling with their roots to the 
rock, and lean over the abyss of foam with something 
of that air of fatal fascination which is apt to take pos- 
session of men. Under the influence of the cool 
shadow of cliffs and pine, and constant percolating of 

13 




14 



surface waters, a rare fertility is developed in the 
ravines opening upon the cafion shore. A luxuriance 
of ferns and mosses, an almost tropical wealth of green 
leaves and velvety carpeting line the banks. There 
are no rocks at the base of the fall. The sheet of 
foam plunges almost vertically into a dark beryl-green 
lake-like expanse of river 

"Immense volumes of foam roll up from the cata- 
ract base, and whirling about in eddying winds, rise 
often a thousand feet in the air. When the wind 
blows down the canon, a gray mist obscures the river 
for half a mile, and when, as is usually the case in the 
afternoon, the breezes blow eastward, the foam cloud 
curls over the brink of the fall and hangs like a veil 
over the upper river. On what condition depends the 
height to which the foam cloud rises from the base of 
the fall, it is apparently impossible to determine. 
Without the slightest wind, the cloud of spray often 
rises several hundred feet above the canon wall, and 
again, with apparently the same conditions of river 
and atmosphere, it hardly reaches the brink. Inces- 
sant roar, re-enforced by a thousand echoes, fills the 
canon. Out of this monotone, from time to time, rise 
strange wild sounds, and now and then may be heard 
a slow, measured beat, not unlike the recurring fall of 
breakers. From the white front of the cataract, the 
eye constantly wanders up to the black, foaming par- 
apet of lava. Angular bastions rise sharply from the 
general level of the wall, and here and there isolated 
blocks, profiling upon their sky line, strikingly recall 
barbette batteries. To goad one's imagination up to 
the point of perpetually seeing resemblances of every- 
thing else in the forms of rock, is the most vulgar vice 
of travelers; to refuse to see the architectural sug- 
gestions upon Snake Canon, however, is to administer 
a flat snub to one's fancy. The whole edge of the 
canon is deeply cleft in vertical crevices. The actual 
brink is usually formed of irregular blocks and prisms 
of lava, poised upon their ends in an unstable equi- 
librium, ready to be tumbled over at the first leverage 
of the frost. Hardly an hour passes without the boom 
of one of those rock masses falling upon the ragged 
debris piles below. 

" Night is the true time to appreciate the full force 
of the scene. I lay and watched it many hours. The 
broken rim of the basin profiled itself upon a mass 

15 



of drifting clouds, when torn openings revealed 
gleams of pale moonlight and bits of remote sky 
trembling with misty stars. Intervals of light and 
blank darkness hurriedly followed each other. For a 
moment the black gorge would be crowded with 
forms. Tall cliffs, ramparts of lava, the rugged out- 
lines of islands huddled together on the cataract's 
brink, faintly luminous foam breaking over black 
rapids, the swift white leap of the river, and a ghostly, 
formless mist through which the canon walls and far 
reach of the lower river were veiled and unveiled 
again and again. A moment of this strange picture, 
and then a rush of black shadow, when nothing could 
be seen but the breaks in the clouds, the basin rim, 
and a vague white centre in the general darkness. * * 

" The cliffs around the upper cataract, or " Twin 
Falls," are inferior to those of the Shoshone. While 
the level of the upper plain remains nearly the same, 
the river constantly deepens the channel in its west- 
ward course. In returning from the upper falls I at- 
tempted to climb along the very edge of the cliff, in 
order to study carefully the habits of the basalt, but I 
found myself in a labyrinth of side crevices, which 
were cut into the plain from a hundred to a thousand 
feet back from the main wall. These recesses were 
usually in the form of an amphitheater, with black walls 
200 feet high, and a bottom filled with immense frag- 
ments of basalt rudely piled together." 

The Hon. J. M. Goodwin of Salt Lake City, the 
well-known brilliant journalist, has described his im- 
pressions of Shoshone Falls so vividly and with such 
dramatic vigor, that his sketch is reproduced herewith. 
It is a fitting tribute to the " glory and the grandeur of 
Shoshone Falls," as Judge Goodwin aptly terms his 
beautiful description: 

" The lava beds of Idaho are a marked feature of 
that Territory. Starting near the eastern boundary 
they extend southwesterly for a long distance, and are 
from 300 feet to 900 feet in depth. This mass was 
once a river of molten fire, the making of which must 
have succeeded a convulsion of Nature more terrible 
than any ever witnessed by mortals, and long years 
must have passed before the awful fiery mass was 
cooled. To the east of the source of the lava flow, 
the Snake river bursts out of the hills, becoming 
almost at once a sovereign river, and flowing at first 

16 



southwesterly and then bending westerly, cuts through 
the lava fields nearly in the center of the Territory, 
reckoned from east to west, and about forty miles 
north of its southern border, and thence flowing with 
great curves, merges finally with the Columbia. The 
two rivers combined make one of the chief water- 
ways of the continent, and here and there take on 
pictures of great beauty. But there is only one path- 
way to the Great Shoshone Falls, and that is from 
Shoshone Station, on the Oregon Short Line Division 
of the Union Pacific. 

"The Great Falls are twenty-six miles due south 
from the station, and may be reached in three hours 
by stage or private conveyance. Shoshone Station is 
a busy, wide-awake railway town of 1,000 people; 
it is 1,200 miles distant from Omaha; 1,427 from Kansas 
City; 788 from Denver; 298 from Salt Lake; 261 
from Ogden ; and 624 miles from Portland, Oregon. 

" Never anywhere else was there such a scene; never 
anywhere else was so beautiful a picture hung in so 
rude a frame; never anywhere else, on a background 
so forbidding and weird, were so many glories clus- 
tered. 

" Around and beyond, there is nothing but the desert 
— sere, silent, lifeless — as though Desolation had 
builded there everlasting thrones to Sorrow and Des- 
pair. 

" Away back in remote ages, over the withered breast 
of the desert, a river of fire, 100 miles wide and 400 
miles long, was turned. As the fiery mass cooled, its 
red waves became transfixed, and turned black, giving 
to the double-desert an indescribably blasted and for- 
bidding face. 

" But while this river of fire was in flow, a river of 
water was fighting its way across it, or has since made 
war and forged out for itself a channel through the 
mass. This channel looks like the grave of a volcano 
that had been robbed of its dead. 

" But right between its crumbling and repellent walls, 
transfiguration appears. And such a' picture! A river 
as lordly as the Hudson or the Ohio, springing from 
the distant snow-crested Tetons with waters transpar- 
ent as glass, but green as emerald, with majestic 
flow and ever-increasing volume, sweeps on until it 
reaches this point where the display begins. 
3M 17 



" Suddenly, in different places in the river-bed, jagged 
rocky reefs are upheaved, dividing the current into 
four rivers, and these, in a mighty plunge of eighty 
feet downward, dash on their way. Of course the 
waters are churned into foam, and roll over the preci- 
pice white as are the garments of the morning when 
no cloud obscures the sun. The loveliest of these falls 
is called " The Bridal Veil," because it is made of the 
lace which is woven with a warp of falling waters and 
a woof of sunlight. Above this and near the right 
bank, is a long trail of foam, and this is called " The 
Bridal Trail." The other channels are not so fair as 
the one called " The Bridal Veil," but they are more 
fierce and wild, and carry in their ferocious sweep 
more power. 

" One of the reefs which divides the river in mid- 
channel runs up to a peak, and on this a family of 
eagles have, through the years, may be through 
centuries, made their home and reared their young, 
on the very verge of the abyss and amid the full 
echoes of the resounding roar of the falls. Surely 
the eagle is a fitting symbol of perfect fearlessness, and 
of that exultation which comes with battle clamors. 

" But these first falls are but a beginning. The greater 
splendor succeeds. With swifter flow, the startled 
waters dash on, and within a few feet take their second 
plunge in a solid crescent, over a sheer precipice, 210 
feet to the abyss below. On the brink there is a 
rolling crest of white, dotted here and there, in 
sharp contrast, with shining eddies of green, as might 
a necklace of emerald shimmer on a throat of snow, 
and then the leap and fall. ^ 

" Here more than foam is made. Here the waters 
are shivered into fleecy spray, whiter and finer than 
any miracle that ever fell from an India loom; while 
from the depths below, an everlasting vapor rises — 
the incense of the waters to the water's God. Finally, 
through the long, unclouded days, the sun sends down 
his beams, and to give the startling scene its growing 
splendor, wreathes the terror and the glory in a rainbow 
halo. On either sullen bank the extremities of its arc 
are anchored, and there, in its many-colored robes of 
light, it lies outstretched above the abyss like wreaths 
of flowers above a sepulchre. Up through the glory 
and terror an everlasting roar ascends, deep toned as in 
the voice of fate, a diapason like that the rolling ocean 

18 



chants when his eager surges come rushing in to greet 
and fiercely woo an irresponsive promontory. 

"But to feel all the awe and to mark all the splen- 
dor and power that comes of the mighty display, one 
must climb down the deep descent to the river's brink 
below, and pressing up as nearly as possible to the 
falls, contemplate the tremendous picture. There, 
something of the energy that creates that endless 
panorama is comprehended; all the deep throbbing 
of the mighty river's pulses are felt, all the magnificence 
is seen. 

" In the reverberations that come of the war of waters, 
one hears something like God's voice; something like 
the splendor of God is before his eyes; somethingakin 
to God's power is manifesting itself before him, and 
his soul shrinks within itself, conscious, as never before, 
of its own littleness and helplessness in the presence 
of the workings of Nature's immeasurable forces. 

' k Not quite so massive is the picture as is Niagara, 
but it has more lights and shades and lovelines\ as 
though a hand more divinely skilled had mixed the 
tints, and with more delicate art had transfixed them 
upon that picture suspended there in- its rugged and 
sombre frame. 

' As one watches, it is not difficult to fancy that, away 
back in the immemorial and unrecorded past, the'angel 
of love bewailed the fact that mortals were to be giv^en 
existence in a spot so forbidding, a spot that, appar- 
ently, was never to be warmed with God's smile, which 
was never to make a sign through which God's mercy 
was to be discerned; that then Omnipotence was 
touched, that with His hand He smote the hills and 
started the great river in its flow; that with His finger 
He traced out the channel across the corpse of that 
other river that had been fire, mingled the sunbeams 
with the raging waters, and made it possible in that 
fire-blasted frame of scoria to swing a picture which 
should be, first to the red man and later to the pale 
races, a certain sign of the existence, the power, and 
the unapproachable splendor of Jehovah. 
. " And as the red man, through the centuries, watched 
the spectacle, comprehending nothing except that an 
infinite voice was smiting his ears, and insufferable 
glories were blazing before his eyes; so, through the 
centuries to come, the pale races will stand upon the 
shuddering shore and watch, experiencing a mighty 

19 




APPROACH TO YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 
Rep.ched via the Union Pacific Ry. 
Ford of the Snake River. 2. Spearing Trout, Snake River. 

3. Hunter's Cabin, Henry's Lake. 



20 



impulse to put off the sandals from their feet, under 
an overmastering consciousness that the spot on which 
they are standing is holy ground. 

"There is nothing elsewhere like it, nothing half so 
weird, so beautiful, so clothed in majesty, so draped 
with terror, nothing else that awakens impressions at 
once so startling, so winsome, so profound. While 
journeying through the desert, to come suddenly upon 
it, the spectacle gives one something of the emotions 
that would be experienced to behold a resurrection 
from the dead. In the midst of what seems like a dead 
world, suddenly there springs into irrepressible life 
something so marvelous, so grand, so caparisoned 
with loveliness and irresistible might, that the head 
is bowed, the strained heart throbs tumultously, and 
the awed soul sinks to its knees." 

THE BLUE LAKES (Shoshone Falls). 

"While Shoshone Falls itself is full of varied and 
never ceasing interest and wonder, its environments 
afford much to attract the tourist or the student of 
nature. One can spend a profitable day examining 
the peculiar lava formation as exhibited in the rugged 
walls of the Grand Canyon of the Snake River, both 
above and below the Main Falls, where they leap into 
the seething abyss 220 feet below the great precipice. 
Going up the channel three miles are found the Twin 
Falls, rushing through a gorge, walled in by the lava 
and divided into two narrow streams, which shoot 
over the face of the rugged rocks side by side, and, 
with a mighty roar, leap 180 feet downward in one 
desperate plunge into the mysterious surging depths 
below. All around is seeming chaos, and such a 
w r eird, powerful, gigantic presence surrounds the 
visitor that he is overcome with awe, while in close 
proximity to either the Main Falls or the Twin Falls. 

So that when rilled by this inexpressible majesty 
and power, and almost dazed by the constant roar and 
rush of waters, it is a relief to turn toward a peaceful, 
quiet little spot known as the Blue Lakes, about four 
miles below the falls. These little lakes are on the 
north bank of Snake River, and are reached by a 
wagon road, by making a slight detour from the stage 
line to the falls. The lakes, and several hundred 
acres of land adjoining, are the property of I. B. Per- 
rine, (of Shoshone) who has improved the place by 

21 



stocking the lakes with speckled trout, and by plant- 
ing several thousand peach and other fruit trees. For 
trout-fishing few better points can be found. The 
waters are perfectly placid and still, shut in, as they 
are, by a semi-circular amphitheatre near the bank of 
the Snake River, several hundred feet below the level 
of the plains on either side. After a row on the 
lake and an exciting time landing the finny tribe, one's 
appetite begins to make demands — and what better 
lunch could be served than a bowl of fresh Idaho 
strawberries and cream, during the latter part of April 
or in May; or, later in the season, a plate of peaches 
or juicy melon, from the garden close by? . The 
orchard contains about four thousand peach trees 
alone, besides grapes, apples, and small fruits. These 
are now bearing. Added to the beauty of the lakes, 
the boating, the fishing, the unfailing system of irriga- 
tion, which produces such wonderful results in the 
desert places, all these will serve to interest and in- 
struct the traveler who visits the Blue Lakes. 

An extensive canal system has been proposed to 
irrigate the vast plains between the Oregon Short 
Line and Shoshone Falls, but at present the Blue 
Lakes are fed by subterranean streams underneath 
the lava beds, and these streams furnish the water to 
irrigate the farm at the lakes, which is truly an oasis 
in the desert. 

Returning to Shoshone Station, the train is taken 
to Hailey, and the famous Hot Springs visited. 

HAILEY. 

Hailey is situated just where Quigley and Croy 
gulches unite with the Wood River Valley, the junc- 
tion affording a fine view in four directions, embrac- 
ing well-cultivated ranches, and ending with the 
foot-hills. The climate is mild and even, and the 
roads, stretching away on all sides, are perfect. The 
mines at Hailey possess much of interest to the 
tourist, and a good hotel furnishes accommodations. 

One and a half miles from Hailey are the famous 
Hailey Hot Springs. The ride or walk thither is very 
pleasant, leading through a picturesque little valley, 
and the location, in a lovely glen in sight of several 
rich mines, is very pleasing. Large volumes of water 
of a temperature of 150 and containing sulphate of 
soda, iron, magnesia, sulphur, and other desirable 

22 



ingredients, are found in scores of springs. Com- 
modious swimming-baths are provided. Many- 
patients have gone to these with chronic cases, 
believed to be hopeless, of neuralgia, paralysis, 
dyspepsia, inflammatory or mercurial rheumatism, and 
other complaints for which the Arkansas springs are 
considered a specific, and after a few months of 
bathing and drinking have left completely restored. 
The baths are also very popular with those in good 
health, thousands visiting them annually for the 
delightfully exhilarating effects of a plunge. 

The largest hospital of Alturas county is near. A 
two-mile drive from Hailey takes the tourist to the 
beautiful valley of Croy Gulch, with an altitude of 
about 5,300 feet. The Bolton Hot Springs, five miles 
from Hailey, are also very efficacious in relieving and 
curing rheumatism. Bellevue, five miles south of 
Hailey, is a pretty little town. 

KETCHUM. 

Ketchum, a rapidly growing town of about 2,000 
to 3,000 people, lies thirteen miles north of Hailey, 
and is beautifully situated at the head of the Wood 
River Valley. At this point, Wood river is as clear 
as crystal, and rich in the finest of mountain trout. 
The vicinity surrounding affords good hunting, and 
elk and bear abound. The mines round about 
Ketchum are large, and will well repay inspection. 
The Guyer Hot Springs, two miles by stage from 
Ketchum, are noted for their medicinal waters, 
and are of high repute throughout the neighboring 
country. There are many objects of interest, both for 
the tourist and pleasure-seeker, in and about Ketchum. 
The scenery is beautiful, and the climate all that could 
be desired. 

GUYER HOT SPRINGS. 

This romantic little mountain resort is situated 
about two miles from Ketchum and seventy miles 
from Shoshone. Regular hacks run to and fro from 
the springs, in connection with the branch trains. 
The springs are comparatively unknown outside of 
Idaho, but are destined to become famous for the 
well-known medicinal qualities of the waters and the 
great natural beauty of the place. The springs, 
about fifteen in number, gush out from the mountain- 
side intensely hot, and are conveyed a short distance 
by pipe to the bath-house, where there are two large 

23 



plunge baths and quite a number of single rooms with 
tubs. The waters are good for all nervous complaints, 
rheumatism, skin and blood affections. This place is 
much resorted to by tourists and invalids. It is a 
beautiful, quiet mountain retreat. The accommoda- 
tions for guests are first-class, and in addition to the 
hotel, there are bath-houses, bowling-alleys, croquet 
and tennis grounds, swings, band-stands, and danc- 
ing-platforms — everything, in short, to make a visit 
pleasant. 

BOISE CITY AND RETURN TO POCATELLO. 

From Shoshone Station, passing westward, the next 
town of importance is Boise City, which is now reached 
from Nampa on the Union Pacific Railway, via the 
Idaho Central. Boise City is nineteen miles from 
Nampa, and has an elevation of 2,840 feet. It has 
a population of about 6,000, good hotel accommo- 
dations, and is a point of interest to the tourist. 
Boise City is the largest, wealthiest, and most 
attractive town in the Territory, with good schools 
and pleasant homes. It is in the center of the 
Idaho fruit-belt. A great many medicinal springs 
are to be found within the immediate neighborhood 
of Boise City, easy of access, and possessing many 
charms, both of water and scenery. 

It is over half a century since Fort Boise was 
established on the west side of Snake river by the 
Hudson Bay Fur Company. It was only a trading post 
for the trappers, and was so called because of the Boise 
(wooded) river emptying into the Snake opposite that 
point. All traces of the French-Canadian trappers 
who caught otter, beaver, and other animals in those 
days have passed away; but the country is still marked 
by names given by them to the streams, mountains, 
and localities. 

Climate and general aspect have not changed, 
except as the savage inhabitants and wild beasts have 
been driven back by the influx of civilization, which 
has changed the broad acres into fruitful fields and 
orchards, dotted the plains with enterprising and 
thrifty towns, cities, and homes, and is fast making 
this land one of the garden spots of the world. With 
this civilization came those great aids of wealth and 
progress, the railways and telegraphs, exerting an 
influence beyond calculation. 

24 



The first settling of Idaho came from the finding 
of gold, and the stampede which followed to the Oro 
Fino country in 1S61 and 1S62. This mining excite- 
ment in the north caused prospecting southward, and 
in the following year Boise Basin and the Owyhee 
countries had their mining excitements, bringing 
hundreds of prospectors from the camps of California, 
Nevada, and other districts. 

The site of Boise City offered such favorable 
inducements for a town that it at once became a 
trading point and winter quarters for the placer 
miners who wanted a pleasant place to remain during 
the season of inactivity in the placers. Boise City 
thus became the commercial town of Idaho, and in the 
organization of the county became the county seat, 
and, very appropriately, is the Capital of the Territory. 

Boise City is situated on the north side of Boise 
river, about fifty miles above its confluence with Snake 
river. On what was once a sage-brush plain, 
apparently almost a desert, such as constitutes so vast 
an area of western territory, clear-sighted American 
grit and enterpr-se have, within a little over twenty 
years, built a town which is the pride of its citizens 
and admiration of strangers. This was done when a 
railway was not within 300 miles, and all supplies had 
to be hauled these hundreds of miles across plains 
beset with apparently insurmountable difficulties. 
The railway came nearer only a few years ago, making 
a great change, and now the Idaho Central Branch 
of the Union Pacific Railway has come to the very 
doors of the town, citizens have all the advantages of 
other places, and will soon forget the privations of 
the past. 

The growth of Boise City, from the first down to 
the present, has been steady and sure. It has been a 
healthy growth, without a boom at any time, and has 
never been affected by temporary excitements; but 
has advanced year by year permanently, each being 
an improvement over the former year. 

In 1880 her population was 1,899. Now it is about 
6,000, and the assessed valuation is $4,000,000, on a 
very low assessment. 

The streets are wide and clean, and have good cross- 
ings, and the dense growth of shade trees on each 
side of all the streets makes the avenues delightfully 
shady and pleasant. The business part of the 

4M 25 



town is substantially built with brick and stone, a city- 
ordinance forbidding the erection of wooden build- 
ings within certain limits. 

Five miles above Boise City, up the Boise Valley, 
are a dozen or more hot springs. Some are boiling 
hot, while others are moderately warm. The water 
possesses great medical qualities, and persons afflicted 
with rheumatism, paralysis, malaria, or any chronic 
diseases, are sure to find relief in a short time after 
bathing in these springs. Steam baths, mud baths, 
tub and plunge baths are supplied, and the doctors 
who are acquainted with the curative properties of 
these waters pronounce them equal to the Arkansas 
Hot Springs, Paso Roble in California, or any springs 
in the world, and recommend them with great favor 
to patients. The conveniences and accommodations 
for guests at these springs will be largely improved 
another season, and they will soon become the 
Saratoga of the Northwest. Nature has made it a 
place of great curiosity, and the waters have always 
proved so beneficial that the springs only need to be 
known to become famous. The drive to the springs 
is through a thickly settled portion of the suburbs of 
the city, studded on either side by beautiful orchards 
and groves, laden at the proper season with the most 
delicious fruits. The United States penitentiary is 
passed a quarter of a mile to the left, when we soon 
come near the river bank, where a bluff two miles or 
more in length forms the immense stone quarries that 
furnish building material for Boise City and Southern 
Idaho. We next reach the large farm and stock 
ranch which belongs to the springs property, the 
springs lying in a large cove or gulch to the right, a 
portion of the water falling over thirty feet in height, 
forming a picturesque appearance, causing admiration 
and astonishment to the beholder. This is one pi the 
loveliest drives out of Boise City, and a place of great 
resort for the people of the city and visitors who come 
to the capital. Fish ponds, groves, orchards, and 
places of amusement are in course of construction, and 
the bountiful supply of the table from the dairy and 
farm products of the proprietor will make it a desir- 
able place to spend the summer months, while the 
hunting and fishing grounds in the hills and mountains 
near by and up the Boise river, will furnish ample 
sport to all who enjoy the rod and gun. 

26 



The second tour is from Pocatello to 

SODA SPRINGS. 

This famous resort has become well known to 
tourists only within the past few years. The new 
hotel, the I dan ha, elegant and commodious, meets all 
requirements for ease and comfort, while the sanitary 
effects of the waters are incomparable. 

la Springs has an elevation of 5,780 feet above 
sea-level and is 1,021 miles from Omaha, 798 from 
Portland, 258 from Salt Lake, and 221 from Ogden. 
There are trains by way of Pocatello or Granger; 
and through passengers may reach it from the 
East or West. The temperature is beautifully even 
and mild in summer. These springs have been 
known of men for above half a century. The 
Spaniards were here, we know; because at the Cari- 
boo mines, fifty-five miles north, weapons with the mark 
of Spain upon them have been found. The Indians 
have always held the springs in great veneration, and 
Brigham Young blessed them when he visited the place 
in 1868. It is more than probable that the first white 
men of recent times who were here were members of 
the old Rocky Mountain Fur Company. A party of 
them were at Salt Lake in 1824, and wintered there. 
They made explorations north, and traced the course 
of several rivers in the adjacent territory, but we have 
no record of a visit to Soda Springs. In 1826, many 
trappers and hunters were exploring the Yellowstone 
and Bear rivers, and it is supposed visited here. The 
springs were a favorite spot in the early 50s for over- 
land travelers to stop and recruit, and all through the 
later years when the great trains of gold-seekers and 
emigrants passed over the old Oregon trail they 
paused at Soda Springs to refresh themselves and rest 
their jaded horses and cattle. There are no Indian 
legends connected with the springs. The modern 
noble red man regards these bubbling miracles as " big 
medicine," and refuses to drink of them. They would 
go miles to get fresh running water rather than touch 
the springs. Soda creek runs sparkling down and 
empties south into Bear river. The basin in which 
these springs are located is about twelve miles long by 
four wide. The area of spring district usually visited 
is about six miles by three, but the whole country is 
impregnated for a long distance away up to Blackfoot. 

27 




28 



There are but few springs of any consequence north 
of this point — that is, into the upper country of 
Montana and the adjacent mountain country. 

There are thirteen springs within a radius of one-half 
a mile from the hotel — the first one, 200 feet from the 
hotel, bubbles from the top of a conical mound. 
Swan Lake, six miles east, is a beautiful sheet of water 
of unknown depth; Formation Springs, five miles 
northeast, shows some curious effects of lime deposit, 
petrifying moss leaves and twigs perfectly. Hooper 
Spring, one and one-half miles distant, is a beauty; but 
all pale into insignificance before the Mammoth Spring. 
This is five miles from the station. The road leads 
one to a level stretch of prairie covered with waving 
grass rimmed in by foothills. One walks to the very 
margin of the spring before it is discovered, so com- 
pletely -is it hidden. And there within a circle of a 
few yards, a dozen springs form a pool. The water is 
intensely blue and very deep. Looking down into 
those unfathomed depths one sees, in brilliant contrast 
to the color of the water, a white column cleave its 
way up from its mysterious home, and break in beaded 
jets upon the surface. There is a weird fascination in 
watching it, and to drink at this fountain is to taste 
Nature's champagne. This spring and the Hooper 
are very strongly charged, and offer a most delicious 
beverage. Chloride of sodium, bicarbonate of mag- 
nesium, and bicarbonate of calcium predominate, and 
an excess of free carbonic acid gas. The health-giving 
properties of the waters are widely known, and are rec- 
ommended by the faculty as a specific for indigestion, 
stomach and kidney troubles, etc. Springs near the sta- 
tion are strongly tinctured with iron, and are an effectual 
remedy for thin blood, ladies in delicate health, etc. 
The " Idanha " water is bottled at the works about a 
mile from the station. Many charming excursions can 
be arranged from Soda Springs. There is fine fishing 
on all sides, mountain climbing for those who desire 
it, plenty of sport in duck shooting, and an infinite 
variety of lovely drives in every direction. 

Beyond the possibility of a doubt, those bright, 
sparkling waters, bursting forth from the earth in a 
hitherto but little known valley of Idaho, and now 
bearing the name of Soda Springs, are yet to become 
of world-wide celebrity. When the Union Pacific 
Company built the Oregon Short Line from Granger 

29 



westward, passing through the secluded valley and 
within a few feet of many of the springs, the destiny 
of the place was changed. Henceforward, instead of 
being sought by the few whose knowledge of the 
virtues existing in the waters led them to this out-of- 
the-way place, it was to be in the reach of the many; 
its springs to be as a magnet to attract the afflicted 
from every State, and to yield to thousands the boon 
of health regained. Yet, as was said by the Salt Lake 
Daily Tribune in its account of the springs in 1887: 
"Of the tens of millions of people who inhabit the 
United States east of the Rocky Mountains, probably 
not one in a thousand has heard of the Soda Springs 
in Idaho Territory; probably not one in ten thousand 
has any idea of their rare medicinal properties, and not 
one in a hundred thousand realizes that, in comparison 
with them, all the famous spas of the old world sink 
into insignificance." 

But for all that, they were not entirely unknown 
even in days long past. " From time immemorial, 
the virtue of these waters was known to the Indians; 
they were officially reported by General Fremont in 
his explorations of 1843; they afforded health and 
invigoration to thousands who came 'across the 
plains ' in later years ; they were discovered by the 
Mormon explorers when they penetrated into the 
northern country, and were afterward solemnly 
blessed by Brigham Young. Their local reputation 
as a health resort has always stood high, and many 
have been the praises heaped upon them." Now, how- 
ever, the Union Pacific have made them easily access- 
ible from all points; "the journey that required four 
months of incessant toil and hardship from the East 
to the springs, a palace car makes easily and without 
a jar in one and a half days, while the route between 
the springs and the Pacific is compassed in the same 
luxurious way in two days." 

But it is of the waters we were about to speak: The 
importation of table waters from Europe is immense, 
and the statistics showed two years ago that there were 
twice as many thousand cases of Apollinaris sold in 
New York alone as the custom house showed was 
imported from all Europe, leaving the deduction 
that at least half the so-called Apollinaris sold in the 
United States is bogus. Beside, the Apollinaris is 

30 



charged with gas to give it life. A large quantity of 
other water, ostensibly from other European and 
American springs, is also sold. Now it is known that 
the Soda Springs water equals or excels the best of 
them. The waters, as stated by the Tribune, " are 
charged with bicarbonate of soda, bicarbonate of 
potash, chloride of sodium and potash, sulphate of 
magnesia and lime, alumina, silica, carbonate of iron, 
J| free carbonic acid gas, and a multitude of other ingre- 
* dients, and they are almost specifics for the cure of 
all manner of indigestion, all kidney troubles, up 
- even to advanced symptoms of Bright's disease, and 
i diabetes, dropsy, and a thousand kindred ills; they 
$ take away all appetite for spirituous liquors, and the 
water is the pleasantest for table use that has ever 
been found. Lately, about two years ago, " the Soda 
Springs "Water Company was organized, and a series 
of scientific and mechanical experiments, continuing 
through several weeks, were carried on until the 
secret of bottling the water and retaining all its pleas- 
ant and medicinal properties was caught; and now 
the water is on sale in all towns of the surrounding 
» country, and the trade has so rapidly extended, east 
A and west, that it is believed it will practically drive 
J out of use the water from European spas before the 
close of the present year." They are now bottling 
two million quarts every twelve months. 

The splendid new hotel erected and owned by the 
National Mineral Water Company, and now leased by 
the Pacific Hotel Company, was opened for the 
reception of guests June i, 1888. 

The Idanha is first class in all respects; with all 
the modern improvements; water, electric lights, elec- 
tric bells, etc. It has ample accommodation for 150 
guests. All passenger trains stop at its very doors, 
and every attention will be paid to those honoring the 
new hotel with a visit. Rates will be from $3 
per day upward, with special rates for parties or 
families, or those contemplating an extended stay. 
Livery service and attentive guides always to be pro- 
cured at reasonable rates. 

Soda Springs occupy a valley in a depression in the 
Wahsatch Mountains, at an altitude of about 6,000 feet. 
Around them the lofty peaks of the mountains are 
covered with perpetual snow. The region is full of 
interest, not to the geologist alone, but also to the 

31 




CLIFF IN GRAND CANON, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 
Reached via the Union Pacific Ry 



J2 



ordinary sightseer. The number of springs, each 
with an individuality of its own, is amazing. Among 
the prominent and the curious we may specially name 
the following: The Idanha, the Hooper, the Mam- 
moth, the Eye Water, the Brigham, the Lime Kiln, 
the Champagne, the Steamboat, the Formation Spring 
and Cave, and Swan Lake. 

All the springs should be seen by persons wishing 
to realize the strangeness of the Soda Springs region. 
At different periods the under currents have changed 
their place of emergence, until the whole country 
shows traces of the limy deposits. 

At the Idanha the Natural Mineral Water Company 
have their bottling works, and of the waters, they bot- 
tle annually over two million quarts. The Hooper is 
a glorious spring, bursting out of the earth in a great 
volume of crystal clearness, sparkling brilliantly in the 
sunlight as it hurries away to form the greater part of 
Soda Spring creek. Its waters contain a somewhat 
larger percentage of iron than the Idanha, and dif- 
fers somewhat in taste from that peerless spring. 
The Steamboat received its name in the early days, 
being described in the old guide books to California and 
Oregon. Its hot, jetting water gives off a noise of 
escaping steam exactly like the regular puffing of a 
steamboat. Formation. Spring is particularly novel, 
and the cause of the name is a deep, well-like hole 
descending into the earth at an acute angle, being 
merely the crater of an extinct hot spring. Swan Lake 
is one of the most beautiful as well as most strange 
of all the springs; every effort to sound its depths 
has so far been unavailing; its waters are delightfully 
clear and of a deep green color. Oval in form, it is 
slightly more than sixty feet by forty feet across. On 
the west side the water trickles over a bank thirty-five 
or forty feet high, which has been formed by the water 
itself, highly charged with lime, leaving a residue as 
the waters evaporated in the summer sunshine. 
Around the margin, bushes and willows grow, and 
where the overhanging branches drop into the water 
they have become covered with the limy formation. 
Wagon loads of specimens, leaves, twigs, grasses, -all 
intermingled in a net-work of stony embroidery, have 
been collected from the locality, and now adorn the 
cabinets of those prizing such freaks of nature, all 
over the land. 

33 



While mentioning the places of interest to be visited, 
we must not forget to mention the Big Bend of Bear 
river, about five miles from the hotel, and the crater 
of an extinct volcano, a few miles farther away. This 
volcano, when in an active state, poured its molten 
lavas down into the canon of the Port Neuf, and out 
onto the Snake river plains beyond. 

The region around Soda Springs may be said to be 
a paradise for the fisherman and hunter. Bear river 
always yields a fine reward to the lover of rod and 
line; what is known as Eight Mile stream is even 
better, while the Blackfoot creek, a tributary of Snake 
river, is without an equal for trout in all the country 
round, it is the trout stream par excellence. Of game 
there is the following : Ducks, prairie chickens, sage 
hens, geese and swans. In the season thereof, ten to 
twelve miles from the hotel, among the spurs of the 
Wahsatch Mountains, deer and elk are quite plentiful, 
and the nimrod, if he so desires, can know what it is 
to face the bear. Those specially fond of duck 
shooting should note the following : A party from 
Butte City, Mont., last fall, in a two days' hunt, secured 
500 ducks, besides something between thirty and forty 
geese. The fisherman fares equally as well, and in 
hunting for the larger game the results are always 
fine. 

CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SPRINGS. 

The following analysis of Horse- Shoe or Codman 

Spring was made by Mr. H. B: Hodges, Chemist and 

Engineer of Tests, Union Pacific Railway: 

Specific Gravity 1.0501 at 15 Co. 

Temperature of Spring 57* F. 

One gallon contains in solution: 

Carbonate of Lime 74-64 grains. 

Carbonate of Magnesia 72 

Carbonate of Iron 2.59 

Carbonate of Manganese .08 

Sulphate of Lime 1.13 

Sulphate of Magnesia 33-59 

Chloride of Magnesia .72 

Bromide of Magnesia '- .03 

Silica _ 3.71 

Alumina .18 

Bicarbonate of Ammonia - - 20 

Bicarbonate of Potash 5. 48 

Bicarbonate of Soda. -- 2.65 

Chloride of Lithium. __ Trace. 



Total _ _ 134 72 

Total Carbonic Acid. - 178. 13 

1 Liter contains 1543 c. c. of Free Carbonic Acid. 

34 



This analysis was sent to Professor E. S. Wood, of 
Harvard Medical School, who records his opinion as 
follows: 

Harvard Medical School, 

Chuucal Laboratory, 

Boston, Mass., April 16, 1889. 

The Codman or Horse-Shoe Spring water is very 
decidedly a chalybeate water and also a laxative one. 
It contains about twice as much carbonate of iron as 
the Saratoga High Rock Spring, more than twice as 
much as the Saratoga Hathorn Spring, and about 
the same as the Saratoga Pavilion Spring, all of which 
are highly praised as ferruginous waters, as you are 
undoubtedly aware. 

The water of the Codman Spring resembles, as far 
as the amounts of lime, magnesia, and iron are con- 
cerned, the water of the famous Kissingen Springs of 
Germany, which are extolled as tonic and laxative 
waters. These waters contain, however, also consider- 
able quantities of common salt, while the Codman 
Spring water contains none. 

I have no hesitation in saying that the analysis of 
Mr. Hodges shows that the water of the Codman or 
Horse-Shoe Spring possesses greater tonic and laxa- 
tive properties than that of many mineral springs 
which have received a world-wide reputation as tonics 
and laxatives. 

(Signed.) EDWARD S. WOOD. 

The following analysis has been made of the 
various springs in and around the town of Soda 
Springs: 



Codman Spring 

Hooper Spring 

Idanha Water (90^) Sp'g 

Mound Hot Spring 

Steamboat Spring 

Roland Spring 

Octagon Spring 

Williams Spring 

Meadow Spring 

Triplet Spring 

Sulphur Lake Spring 



Tempekature. 



Water. Air. 



57 F. 
52 F. 



83 F. 

52 F. 
52 F. 
56 F. 
61 F. 



57 
66 



Total Solids 
per U.S. Gal. 



Grams. 

134-72 
79-95 
87.70 

197.98 

I9I-55 
170.50 
130.80 
139.86 



93-5Q 



Iron. 



Protoi- 
ide. 



I 

.20 



.98 

1. 14 

•44 

.27 



Carbon- 
ate. 



2-59 
2.91 
1.50 



2. II 

2.50 

.91 

•51 



35 




FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE, YELLOWSTON 
Reached via the Union Pacific Ry. 



PARK. 



36 



MONTANA 

is an Indian word, meaning- " the country of the 
mountains," and was visited by the French explorer 
Verendrye and his brother as early as 1 743-44. The 
Lewis and Clarke expedition was here in 1805, and 
named the three forks of the Missouri respectively, Gal- 
latin, Madison and Jefferson. This region was a part 
of the Louisiana purchase of 1803. The Territory was 
organized May 16, 1864, and admitted into the Union 
in November, 1S89, and is in extent 550 miles from 
east to west and nearly 300 from north to south, 
containing an area of 150,000 square miles. There 
are 16,000,000 acres of farm land, 38,000,000 acres of 
grazing land and 14,000,000 acres of forest. One- 
fifth of the territory, or about 20,000,000 acres, is 
mountainous. 

The third tour is made from Pocatello to Beaver 
Canon, where the traveler outfits for Yellowstone 
Park. 

When Yellowstone National Park was set aside to 
be forever the grand tourist resort of the people, and 
their common property, few had an idea of the endless 
variety and stupendous grandeur of the features 
embraced in this tract of country, fifty-five by sixty- 
five miles. The park embraces an area of 3,000 square 
miles, has. an average elevation of about 8,000 feet 
above sea-level, and is encircled by magnificent mount- 
ain ranges. 

From Beaver Canon the Union Pacific runs a fine 
line of stages to Fire Hole Basin, in the park, 100 
miles distant. The stage ride from Beaver Canon to 
Fire Hole Basin lies through a series of wonders, 
passing by Henry Lake, with its grassy shores that lie 
3,000 feet below the peaks reflected in it. Sawtelle 
Mountain is full of darkly splendid caves. Cliff Lake 
is ten miles away. The plummet has been dropped 
1,400 feet into its depths, but found no bottom. Hunt- 
ing and fishing in this vicinity will amply repay the 
sportsman, though he comes from over the ocean. 
Bowling over Tyghee Pass and into the luxuriant 
meadows of the Upper Madison Valley,the tourist over- 
looks a wilderness of pine-clothed heights and depths. 
Fifteen miles and the South Fork of the Madison 
river is crossed, ten miles from the entrance of the park; 

37 




GEYSERS, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 
Reached via the Union Pacific Ry. 



38 



once inside of which, the tourist is on Madison Ter- 
race, a beautiful natural drive. There the tourist 
strikes a spur of Madison Range for Fire Hole 
Basin, from which roads reach to every attraction the 
park affords. From the summit there is another of 
these matchless views, including Madison Basin and 
the river as it winds for thirty miles in and out of 
sight. From Fire Hole Basin there are seen pillars of 
clouds showing where the springs and geysers are. 
Geyser Meadows are two miles away. Here are sev- 
eral geysers which throw their torrents twenty-five 
feet or higher. Dome Spring is at the top of a calcare- 
ous deposit of livid colors, and some of its neighbors 
are similarly situated. " Queen Laundry " is a spring 
whose waters will almost instantly cleanse even the 
dirtiest saddle blanket, and which finally drop into a 
basin at delightful bathing temperature. Fairy Creek 
Falls jump 250 feet over an adjacent cliff. With these 
spouting, leaping novelties all about, Midway Geyser 
Basin is reached five miles from Fire Hole Basin. 
Here are the grandest hot springs in the world. The 
overflow of hot water comes from the Great Spring 
the equal of which no human eye ever saw. This 
aperture is 250 feet across and is walled in by sides 
thirty feet high. The surface is in constant turmoil, 
and the rising steam scalds the incautious. A glance 
into the gulf causes a shudder. Only a few yards 
away there is a cold fount twenty-five feet in diameter, 
filling an elaborately-chased basin of unknown depth. 
Near by are the ChalkVats, bubbling and spurting their 
mushy compound, and throwing out splashes of it 
which vary from a snowy white to a bright pink. 

Upper Geyser Basin, eight miles from Fire Hole 
Basin, is the seat of the ten largest geysers ever dis- 
covered, beside which those of Iceland are trifling. 
There is a charming grove within a stone's-throw of 
Castle Geyser, which begins to give vent to its pent 
up force in muttered thunder, and then its flood 
shoots over the cone, first a spurt and then a stream; 
then with a shaking of the earth and the roar of a tem- 
pest, a river bounds upward like a rocket, submerg- 
ing broad acres with the descent of its boiling flood. 
Half a mile away " Old Faithful " spouts every fifty- 
seven minutes, throwing a stream several feet in 
diameter to a height of 200 feet. Across the river is 
the " Bee Hive," whose fountain flies 200 feet in the 

39 



air, forming a crystal arch beautiful in the sunlight. 
" The Giantess " has a crater eighteen by fifteen feet 
in diameter, belching forth such a volume as doubles 
the amount of water in Fire Hole river, here twenty 
feet in width and a foot deep. There is a thrill, a 
groan, a tremor, dense volumes of steam, a rolling 
and clashing of unseen waves, and a deafening boom 
as an immense body of water is hurled upward to the 
sky, its extreme jet reaching 250 feet above the 
earth. 

Next is Gibbon Falls, where, in a wildwood tangle, 
they drop eighty feet; then Gibbon Canon, with its 
sides 2,000 feet high, from which the tourist emerges 
into Elk Park. In the defile is heard a boom, boom, 
boom, that never ceases, and from an orifice in the 
rock comes steam in regular puffs as the pulsation of 
a great waste pipe of an engine. Monument Geyser 
and the famous Paint Pots, with their various and 
vivid hues, are near by. Norris Geyser Basin is the 
next in order. It is the oldest basin in the park, the 
hottest and most dangerous for pedestrians. To the 
right is Mammoth Geyser; when at rest a peep may 
be had into its gaping throat, and its blood-chilling 
gurgle can be distinctly heard. 

Yellowstone Lake is twenty-five miles from Fire 
Hole Basin. The altitude of this lake is 7,788 feet. 
It is thirty miles long and ten to fifteen wide, with 
numerous islands. 

The Natural Bridge of Rock spans Bridge creek at 
a height of forty feet and affords carriage room. 
Down the river twelve miles is Devil's Den; east of 
this is Mud Volcano. Brimstone Mountain is three 
miles below. Here pure sulphur is shoveled up by 
the wagon-load. 

The Upper Falls of the Yellowstone are reached 
by an easy trail. Here the rapids narrow to less 
than 100 feet, and the overhanging rocks press so 
closely together that a bridge could be easily thrown 
across. The water eddies and cascades, and then 
flies downward 397 feet, while the grandest canon of 
the world stretches away 1,500 feet below. The 
mind can not grasp Grand Caflon; words can not paint 
it; it glows with a life of its own, and with colors of 
its own, or born of the sun and the spray. Tower 
Falls and Canon are twenty miles from this charming 
spot. Specimen Mountain is forty miles from Fire 

40 






Hole Basin. It is covered with agate, once wood, 
stone snakes and fishes, with crystals and petrified 
roots, while the view from the summit is sublime. 

And this is Yellowstone National Park. Words 
can not convey a proper realization of its grandeur 
and magnificence. Nowhere else in America are 
there such superb views as the Park affords; nowhere 
else such an abundance of finny game; nowhere else 
such myriads of wild fowl; nowhere else such a de- 
lightful camping, place, or more perfect weather. 

SOAPING A GEYSER. 

A few years ago tourists amused themselves by 
"soaping" many of the geysers in the park and 
watching the commotion which the foreign substance 
created. A very instructive and entertaining paper 
on the subject of " Soaping Geysers," by Mr. Arnold 
Hague, of the United States Geological Survey, was 
read before the American Institute of Mining Engi- 
neers at New York, in February, 1889. Mr. Hague's 
essay is at once so scholarly, and so interesting, that 
it is worthy of permanent preservation, and is inserted 
herewith in full: 

"At the Buffalo meeting, October, 1888, Dr. Ray- 
mond presented a paper entitled: ' Soaping Geysers', 
in which he called attention to the use of soap by 
tourists to cause eruptions of several of the well- 
known geysers in the Yellowstone Park. Incorpo- 
rated in this paper appears a communication received 
from me, written from camp in the park, in reply to 
some inquiries on the subject. The letter discussed 
somewhat briefly the means employed by visitors to 
the park to hasten the eruptions from hot springs and 
reservoirs of hot water, which remain dormant for 
days or even weeks or months, at a temperature near 
the boiling-point, without any display of geyser-action. 
As the paper has called forth considerable comment, I 
desire to elucidate one or two points in relation to the 
temperature of the springs, and to answer some 
inquiries about the composition of the thermal waters. 

" In the summer of 1885, a Chinaman employed as a 
laundryman for the accommodation of the tourists at 
the Upper Geyser Basin, accidentally discovered, much 
to his amazement, that soap thrown into the spring 
from which he was accustomed to draw his supply of 
water, produced an eruption in every way similar to 

41 




ONE OF THE GEYSERS, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 
Reached via the Union Pacific Ry. 



42 



the actual workings of a geyser. Tourists with lim- 
ited time at their command, who had traveled thou- 
sands of miles to look upon the wonders of the 
Yellowstone, soon fell into the way of coaxing the 
laundryman's spring into action, to partly compensate 
them for their sore disappointment in witnessing only 
the periodical eruptions of Old Faithful. Successful 
attempts upon this spring soon led to various endeav- 
ors to accelerate action in the dormant and more 
famous geysers. In a short time, so popular became 
the desire to stimulate geysers in this way, the park 
authorities were compelled to enforce rigidly the 
rule against throwing objects of any kind into the 
springs. 

" In connection with a thorough investigation of the 
thermal waters of the Yellowstone Park and the phe- 
nomena of the geysers, I undertook a number of 
experiments to ascertain the action of soap upon the 
waters, and to determine, if possible, those physical 
conditions of various pools and reservoirs which per- 
mitted the hastening of an eruption by the employ- 
ment of any artificial methods. This investigation, 
conducted from time to time, as opportunity offered, 
throughout the field-season of 1885, included experi- 
ments upon the geysers and hot springs of the Upper, 
Lower, and Norris geyser basins. The results proved, 
beyond all question, that geyser-action could be 
forced in a number of ways; but most conveniently by 
the application of soap. The greater part of the 
more powerful geysers undergo no perceptible change 
with a moderate use of soap, although several of 
them may, under favorable physical conditions, be 
thrown at times into violent agitation. In most of 
the experiments, Lewis's concentrated lye, put up in 
one-half pound cans for laundry purposes, was 
employed. Each package furnished a strong alkali, 
equivalent to several bars of soap. In this form, 
alkali is more easily handled than in bars of soap, 
more especially where it is required to produce a vis- 
cous fluid in the larger reservoirs; and, in conducting 
a series of experiments for comparative purposes, it 
seemed best, in most instances, to employ the same 
agent to bring about the desired results. 

11 Old Faithful, the model geyser of the park, exhib- 
its such marked regularity in its workings that 
attempts to hasten its action appear futile. The 

43 



interval between eruptions is about sixty-five minutes, 
and rarely exceeds the extreme limits of fifty-seven 
and seventy-two minutes. After an eruption of. Old 
Faithful, the reservoir fills up gradually; the water 
steadily increases in temperature; and conditions 
favorable to another eruption are produced under 
circumstances precisely similar to those which have 
brought about the displays for the past eighteen 
years, or as far back as we have authentic records. 
The few experiments which have been made upon 
Old Faithful are insufficient to afford any results 
bearing on the question; but it seems probable that 
soon after the water attains the necessary tempera- 
ture an eruption takes place. 

"Of all the powerful geysers in the park, the Bee* 
Hive offers the most favorable conditions for produc- 
ing an eruption by artificial means, all the more strik- 
ing because the natural displays are so fitful that they 
can not be predicted with any degree of certainty. 
Observations, extending over a period of several 
years, have failed to determine any established law of 
periodicity for the Bee-Hive, even for three or four 
consecutive' months; although they indicate that 
some relationship may exist between its display and 
those of the famous Giantess. Frequently the Bee- 
Hive will play several times a day and then become 
dormant, showing no signs of activity for weeks and 
months, although the water may stand above the 
boiling-point the greater part of the time. The 
name Bee-Hive was suggested by the symmetry of 
the cone built around the vent. It rises about four 
feet above the sloping mound of geyserite, and, in 
cross-section, measures about three feet at the top, 
while, at the bottom of the cone, the vent is less than ten 
inches in width. From the top of this narrow vent 
it is only possible to sink a weight seventeen feet 
before striking a projecting ledge, which interferes 
with all examination of the ground below. The con- 
stant boiling and bubbling of the water, the irregu- 
larity of its action, and the convenient location of the 
geyser, within an easy walk from the hotel, make 
attempts to accelerate the eruptions of the Bee-Hive 
most attractive to tourists. 

"In most instances such efforts are futile; yet suc- 
cess does so frequently reward the astonished trav- 
eler that, unless the geyser were carefully watched 

44 



by the authorities, attempts would be made daily 
throughout the season. If the conditions are favor- 
able to an eruption, it usually takes place in from ten 
to twenty-five minutes after the addition of laundry 
soap or lye. It is doubtful if more than two erup- 
tions of the Bee-Hive have ever been produced on 
the same day by artificial means ; although I know of 
no reason, based upon the structure of the geyser, 
why more displays might not be obtained; for the 
reservoir and vent fill up with boiling water very rap- 
idly after each eruption. 

"Although the Giantess is situated only 400 feet 
from the Bee-Hive, these two differ in surface and 
underground structure, and mode of action, as widely 
as any two of the more prominent geysers of the 
park. Around the Giantess no cone or mound has 
formed. The broad basin is only partially rimmed in , 
by a narrow fringe of siliceous sinter, rising above 
and extending out over the deep blue water. At the 
surface, this basin measures about fifteen to twenty 
feet in width by twenty to thirty feet in length. It 
has a funnel-shaped caldron, thirty feet in depth, 
ending in a vertical vent or neck, twelve feet deep, 
through which a sounding-lead maybe dropped into a 
second reservoir, meeting a projecting ledge or 
obstruction of some kind, sixty-one feet below the 
surface. After an outburst of the Giantess, the basin, 
which has been completely emptied of its water, grad- 
ually fills again to the top; and, for days before 
another eruption, a steady stream of hot water over- 
flows the brim. The intervals between the eruption s 
of the Giantess vary from twelve to twenty days, and 
the displays last several hours, being unsurpassed for 
violence and grandeur by any geyser in the Upper 
Basin. Artificial means have never been successful 
in bringing this geyser into action; although, for days 
before an eruption, it is an easy matter to cause an 
agitation of the water by throwing into the basin 
small pieces of sinter, or to produce a boiling on the 
surface, lasting several minutes, by simply stirring 
the water with a stick. 

"The Giant, one of the most violent of the geysers 
in the Upper Basin, more closely resembles the Bee- 
Hive than any other of those along the Fire Hole river. 
It has built up a cone ten feet in height, one side of 
which has been partly broken down by some eruption 

45 



more violent than any witnessed at the present day 
Through this notched side, steam and broken jets of 
water are constantly emitted; and, on this account but 
little examination has been made of the underground 
reservoirs and vents. The Giant is fitful in its action 
at times playing with considerable regularity every 
fourteen days, and at other times lying dormant for 
nearly a year. I have no positive knowledge that an 
eruption of the Giant has ever been produced by any 
other than natural causes. At the time of my exper- 
iments, no eruption of the Giant had taken place for 
several months; although the water was constantly agi- 
tated, so much so that it was quite impossible "to 
examine the vent with any satisfactory results. The 
only effect produced by the application of lye was 
additional height to the column of water thrown out 
and a decided increase in the thumping and violence 
of the boiling. 

" In the Lower Basin, the Fountain has been more 
carefully studied than the other geysers; and its 
action and periodicity of eruptions having been fairly 
well ascertained, it afforded the most favorable condi- 
tions for observing the action of soap and lye upon 
the waters. In its general structure the Fountain 
belongs to the type of the Giantess, having a funnel- 
shaped caldron which, long before an eruption 
overflows into an adjoining basin. At the time of 
my experiments upon the Fountain, the intervals 
between eruptions lasted about four hours. This 
interval allowed sufficient time to note any changes 
which might take place. My own experiments with 
lye yielded no positive results; although it seemed 
highly probable that action might be hastened by the 
application of soap or lye just before the time for an 
eruption, or when, for some cause, the eruption was 
overdue. I preferred to make the attempt to bring 
about an explosion before the usual time, only wait* 
ing until the water in the pool had nearly reached the 
boiling-point. All experiments failed. The previous 
year, when wishing to produce action for the purpose 
of photography, I was enabled to accomplish the 
desired result by vigorously stirring, with a slender 
pole, the water near the top of the vent connecting 
with the lower reservoir. In this instance, it should 
be said, the usual interval of time between eruptions 
had long since passed; the geyser was, so far as time 

46 



was concerned, a half-hour overdue. My opinion 
now is that the experiments with lye failed because 
the temperature had scarcely reached the boiling- 
point. 

"The Monarch, in the Norris Basin, is quite unlike 
those already described, and affords evidence of 
being a much newer geyser. It is formed by two 
convergent fissures, on the line of a narrow seam in 
the rhyolite, probably coming together below the sur- 
face. The main vent measures about twenty feet in 
length and, at the surface, three feet in width. But 
slight incrustation is found around the vent, the con- 
ditions not being very favorable to deposition. In 
this narrow fissure the water, which ordinarily stands 
about fifteen feet below the surface, constantly surges 
and boils, except immediately after an eruption. The 
intervals between eruptions vary somewhat from 
year to year; but, at the time of these experiments, 
the action was fairly regular, the geyser playing every 
four hours. I was successful in obtaining an erup- 
tion quite equal to the natural displays, which throw 
a column of water fifty feet into the air. Here at the 
Monarch there is no surface reservoir, and the nar- 
row fissure, filled with loose blocks of rocks, around 
which the water is in constant agitation, prevents all 
measurements of depth. 

" The results of the many experiments, not only 
upon active geysers, but upon a large number of hot 
springs, determine fairly well the essential conditions 
which render it possible to bring about geyser-action 
by artificial means. Negative results are frequently 
as valuable for this inquiry as experiments yielding 
imposing displays. 

"Outside of a few exceptional instances, which could 
not be repeated, and in which action was probably 
only anticipated by a few minutes in time, geyser 
eruptions produced by soap or alkali appear to 
demand two essential requirements: First, the sur- 
face-caldron or reservoir should hold but a small 
amount of water, exposing only a limited area to the 
atmosphere; second, the water should stand at or 
above the boiling-point of water for the altitude of 
the geyser basin above sea-level. The principal 
factor which makes it possible to cause an eruption 
artificially is, I think, the superheated and unstable 
condition of the surface-waters. Many of the geysers 

47 



and hot springs present the singular phenomena of 
pools of water heated above the theoretical boiling- 
point, and, unless disturbed, frequently remain so for 
many days without exhibiting any signs of ebullition. 
It may not be easy to describe accurately these super- 
heated waters; but any one who has studied the hot 
springs and pools in the park, and carefully noted the 
temperatures, quickly learns to recognize the peculiar 
appearance of these basins when heated above the 
boiling-point. They look as if they were " ready to 
boil," except that the surface remains placid, only 
interrupted by numerous steam-bubbles, rising 
through the water from below, and bursting quietly 
upon reaching the surface. 

"Marcet, the French physicist, has specially investi- 
gated the phenomena of superheated waters, and has 
succeeded in attaining a temperature of 105 ° C. 
before ebullition. Superheated waters in nature, 
however, appear to have been scarcely recognized, 
except during the progress of the work in the Yellow- 
stone Park, in connection with a study of the gey- 
sers. The altitudes of the geyser basins above 
sea-level have been ascertained by long series of baro- 
metric readings, continued through several seasons. In 
conducting a series oLobservations upon the boiling- 
points of the thermal waters in the park, Dr. William 
Hallock, who had charge of this special investigation, 
determined the theoretical boiling-point by noting the 
mean daily readings of the mercurial column. The 
exact boiling-point of a pure surface-water, obtained 
from a neighboring mountain stream and the boiling- 
point of the thermal waters from the springs, were 
determined from actual experiments by heating over 
a fire, employing every possible precaution to avoid 
sources of error. Surface-waters and deep-seated 
mineral waters gave the same results, and coincided 
with the calculated boiling-point at this altitude. 
Hundreds of observations have been carefully taken 
where the waters in the active and running springs 
boiled at temperatures between 198° and 199 Fahr. 

" As will be shown later in this paper, the thermal 
waters are solutions of mineral matter too dilute to be 
affected to any appreciable extent as regards their 
boiling-point by their dissolved contents. The 
theoretical boiling-point for the springs and pools in 
the Upper Geyser Basin may be taken at 92.5 ° C. 

48 



(i 98.5 Fahr.) In many of the large caldrons, 
where the water remains quiet, a temperature has 
been recorded of 94 C. (201.2° Fahr.), without the 
usual phenomena of boiling. This gives a body of 
superheated water, with a temperature at the surface 
1. 5 C. (2.7° Fahr.) above the point necessary to pro- 
duce explosive action. Thermometers plunged into 
the basins show slightly varying temperatures, depend- 
ent upon their position in the basin. T.hey indicate 
the existence of numerous currents, and a very 
unstable equilibrium of the heated waters, which are 
liable, under slight changes, to burst forth with more 
or less violence. It is under these conditions that 
geyser-action can be accelerated by artificial means. 
If, into one of these superheated basins, a handful of 
sinter pebbles be thrown, or the surface of the water 
be agitated by the rapid motion of a stick or cane, or 
even by lashing with a rope, a liberation of steam 
ensues. This is liable to be followed by a long boil- 
ing of the water in the pool, which in turn may lead 
to geyser-action. There is some reason to believe 
that, at least in one instance, an eruption has been 
brought about by a violent but temporary gust of 
wind, which either ruffled the water or disturbed the 
equilibrium of the pool, and changed momentarily the 
atmospheric pressure. 

44 In Iceland, travelers have long been accustomed to 
throw into the geysers turf and soft earth from the 
bogs and meadows which abound in the neighbor- 
hood, the effect produced being much the same as 
that of sinter pebbles and gravel upon the geysers in 
the National Park. So well was this understood, that 
at one time, a peasant living near the Iceland locality 
kept a shovel solely for the accommodation of those 
visiting the geysers. 

" In my letter to Dr. Raymond, I mention the curious 
fact that the laundryman's spring, now known as the 
Chinaman, in which geyser-action may most easily be 
produced by artificial means, has never been regarded 
by the Geological Survey as anything but a hot 
spring, and no one has ever seen it in action without 
the application of soap, except in one instance, when 
it was made to play to a height of twenty feet, after 
stirring it vigorously with a pine bow for nearly ten 
minutes. In our records it is simply known as a 
spring. 

49 



" If soap or lye is thrown into most of the small 
pools, a viscous fluid is formed ; and viscosity is, I 
think, the principal cause in hastening geyser-action. 
Viscosity must tend to the retention of steam within 
the basin, and, as in the case of the superheated waters, 
where the temperature stands at or above the boiling- 
point, explosive liberation must follow. All alkaline 
solutions, whether in the laboratory or in nature, 
exhibit, by reason of this viscosity, a tendency to bump 
and boil irregularly. Viscosity in these hot springs 
rrrust also tend to the formation of bubbles and foam 
when the steam rises to the surface, and this in turn 
aids to bring about the explosive action, followed by 
a relief of pressure, and thus to hasten the final and 
more powerful display. Of course, relief of pressure 
of the superincumbent waters upon the column of 
water below the surface basin is essential to all 
eruptive action. These conditions, it seems to me, 
are purely physical. Undoubtedly, the fatty sub- 
stances contained in soap aid the alkali in rendering 
the water viscous. On the other hand, when con- 
centrated lye is used, it acts with greater energy, and 
furnishes a viscous fluid where soap would yield only 
surface suds, insufficient to accomplish any phenome- 
nal display. 

" It is well known that saturated solutions of mineral 
substances raise the boiling-point very considerably, 
the temperature having been determined for many of 
the alkaline salts. In general; I believe the boiling- 
point increases in proportion to the amount of salt 
held in solution. Actual tests have shown that the 
normal boiling-point of siliceous waters in the park 
does not differ appreciably from the ordinary surface- 
waters, mainly, I suppose, because they are extremely 
dilute solutions. 

" The amount of lye required to produce a sufficiently 
viscous condition of the waters, increases but slightly 
the percentage of mineral matter held in solution. 

" All the waters of the principal geyser basins present 
the closest resemblance in chemical composition, and, 
for the purposes of this paper, may be considered as 
identical in their constituents. They have a common 
origin, being, for the most part, surface-waters which 
have percolated downward for a sufficient distance to 
come in contact with large volumes of steam ascend- 
ing from still greater depths. The mineral contents 

50 



of the hot springs are mainly derived from the acid 
lavas of the park plateau, as the result of the action 
of the ascending steam and superheated waters upon 
the rocks below. These thermal waters are essentially- 
siliceous alkaline waters, carrying the same constitu- 
ents in somewhat varying quantities; but always dilute 
solutions, never exceeding two grams of mineral mat- 
ter per kilogram of water. When cold, they are 
potable waters, for the most part slightly alkaline to 
the taste, and probably wholesome enough, unless 
taken daily for a long period of time. 

"The following analyses of three geyser-waters, 
selected from the Upper, Lower, and Norris geyser 
basins, may serve to show the composition of all of 
them, the differences which exist being equally well 
marked in the analyses of any two waters from the 
same geyser basin: 





Bek-Hive 

Gey>ek. 


Fountain 
Geysek. 


Fearless 
Geyser. 




Grams 
per kilo, 
of water. 


Percent. 
Of total 
matter in 
solution. 


Grams 
per kilo, 
of water. 


Per cent. 

of total 

matter in 

solution. 


! 

Grams 
per kilo, 
of water. 


Per cent, 
of total 
matter 
in solu- 
tion. 


Silica 

Sulphuric Acid 
Carbonic Acid. 
Phosphoric A'd 
Boracic Acid.. 
Arsenious Acid 

Chlorine 

Bromine 

Iodine 


O.3042 
O.027I 
O.O92O 


25.12 
2.24 

7.60 


0.33I5 

O.OI95 

O.23O7 

O.OOOO4 

O.OI38 

0.0027 

0.3337 
O.OOO4 


23.69 

i-39 
16.48 


O.4180 
O.O367 
O.OO46 


25.60 
2.25 
O.28 


O.OI45 
O.OOII 
O.3894 

Trace. 


I.20 

O.O9 

32.15 


0.99 
0.19 

23.84 
0.03* 


O 0223 
0.0022 
O.6705 
6.0O26 


I.36 

O.I4 

41.06 

O.16 


Fluorine - . 










Ilvdr. Sulph. . 




Trace. 


4.67 

O.OI 


Trace. 
0.0113 
0.0006 




Oxygen (Basic) o 0364 

Iron Trace. 

Manganese _. 


3.00 


0.0654 
0.0002 
Trace. 
0.0057 
0.0014 
|o OOIO 
0.0379 
0.3522 
00035 
0.00015 


O.7O 

O.O4 


Aluminium 0.0029 

Calcium 0. 0039 

Magnesium 0.0002 

Potassium 0.0213 

Sodium 0.3118 

Lithium 0.0061 

Ammonium 0.00021 

Caesium 


O.24 

0.32 
0.02 
I.76 

25-74 
50 
0.02 


0.41 

O.IO 

0.07 

2.71 

25.16 
0.25 

O.OI 




0.0002 
0.0092 

O.OOOI 

0.0415 
0.4046 
0.0081 
0.00025 
1 Trace. 
1 Trace. 


O.OI 
O.56 
O.OI 

2.54 
24.77 

0.50 
0.02 


Rubidium 




















! 
I.2IIII 


100.00 


1-39979 


IOO 00 


1-63275 


100.00 



Bee-Hive Geyser, Upper Geyser Basin ; date of collection, 
September 1, 1884; temperature, 199.4 Fahr. ; reaction, alkaline; 
specific gravity, 1.0009. 

51 



Fountain Geyser, Lower Geyser Basin; date of collection, 
August 24, 1S84; temperature, 179.6° Fahr.; reaction, alkaline; 
specific gravity, 1.0010. 

Fearless Geyser, Norris Geyser Basin; date of collection, 
August 18, 1884; temperature, 190.4° Fahr. ; reaction neutral; 
specific gravity, I.OOII. 

"The differences of temperature shown in these 
three waters are simply due to the varying interval 
between the time of collection and the last preceding 
eruption of the geyser. In the case of the Fountain, 
the water rises in a large, open basin, which slowly fills 
up, increasing in temperature until the time of the 
eruption, the form of the basin permitting the col- 
lection of the water two or three hours before the 
next outburst. In the case of the Fearless, the sur- 
face-reservoir is a shallow saucer-shaped basin, into 
which the water seldom rises before attaining a 
temperature near the boiling-point. At the Bee-Hive, 
the water only reaches a sufficiently high level to 
permit of its collection without difficulty when the 
temperature stands at or near the boiling-point. 

" Dr. Raymond has made the suggestion that the 
addition of caustic alkali would possibly precipitate 
some of the mineral ingredients found in these waters, 
thereby changing their chemical composition suffi- 
ciently to affect the point of ebullition. At the same 
time he remarks that the geyser-waters are probably 
too dilute solutions to be much influenced by such 
additions. Anyone who glances at the analyses of 
the waters of the Bee-Hive, Fountain, and Fearless, 
must see, I think, that they are not only too dilute to 
undergo any marked change of temperature, but that 
the mineral constituents consist mainly of the car- 
bonates and chlorides of the alkalies, associated with 
a relatively large amount of free silica which would 
remain unacted upon by caustic alkali. There is 
nothing in the waters to be thrown down by the 
addition of alkali, or permit any chemical combina- 
tions to be formed by the addition of a small amount 
of soap. The desire of tourists to "soap a geyser," 
during their trip through the park, grows annually 
with the increase of travel, so much so that there is a 
steady demand for the toilet soap of the hotels. If 
visitors could have their way, the beautiful blue springs 
and basins of the geysers would be " in the suds " 
constantly throughout the season. Throwing any- 
thing into the hot springs is now prohibited by the 

52 



Government authorities. It is certainly detrimental 
to the preservation of the geysers, and the practice 
can not be too strongly condemned by all interested in 
the National Reservation." 

This route, with Fire Hole Basin as a center, brings 
the tourist near the leading attractions. 

From Fire Hole Basin — 

The Falls of the Madison are six miles. 

Foot of Madison Canon, eighteen miles. 

Falls and Canon of the Gibbon, ten miles. 

Monument Geyser, eighteen miles. 

Midway Geyser Basin, or " Hell's Half Acre," 
three miles. 

Upper Geyser Basin, eight miles. 

Yellowstone Lake, twenty-five miles. 

Yellowstone Falls and Canon, thirty-two miles. 

Remember this route, via the Union Pacific Rail- 
way from either Council Bluffs or Kansas City, via 
Cheyenne, Green River, Granger, and Pocatello, to 
Beaver Canon, and thence via stage to Fire Hole. 
Basin. 

At Beaver Canon conveyances of any description 
can be obtained, baggage wagons, tents, camp outfit, 
bedding, and provisions. It will be found pleasanter 
and more economical to make up a party of four or 
six for the trip. It will take a camping party ten days 
to thoroughly do all the many points of interest in the 
park, including a return trip to the Lower Basin. 
There is very fine hunting and fishing between Beaver 
Canon and the Lower Basin, and all along the line of 
march. 

HOW THEY SAW IT. 

The practice of presenting testimonials which bear 
witness to the scenic beauties of a railway route, is, as 
a rule, to be deprecated; but, from among the 
thousands received by this department, the two follow- 
ing are selected because they fairly illustrate the 
feelings of every tourist who has visited that enchanted 
ground — the Yellowstone National Park. 

(From Rev. Dr. J. E. Hiklbut.) 

Salt Lake Citv, July i, 1889. 

We have to thank you for a very pleasant trip to 
that wonder of wonders — the Great Yellowstone 
Park; my entire party are enthusiastic in their loud 
praises of every feature of the trip. 

53 



We left Salt Lake City at 6 o'clock a. m., via the 
Utah & Northern Division of the Union Pacific Rail- 
way, and after a delightful ride by the side of the 
Great Salt Lake, and through Salt Lake and Cache 
valleys, we reached Beaver Canon at 6.30 p. m. 

In Bassett Bros , we found men who gave us a good 
bed at their hotel, the best of food, and every accom- 
modation we could ask for. Their drivers are very 
accommodating, and add very much to the enjoyment 
of the trip. 

The morning after our arrival we left for the park, 
driving through an open country. The streams are full 
of trout; and game is abundant, from bear and antelope 
to grouse and snipe. After three or three and a half 
hours' drive, we reached Hancock's, where we got a 
fine dinner. Driving four hours more, we reached Snake 
River, where we found very restful beds and appetizing 
food at the hotel there. 

The next day's drive is through the pine woods; 
game is still plenty. 

A ride of four hours brings us to Tyghee Station, 
where a dinner of extra quality awaited us. 
Another ride of five hours, and we were landed at 
Fire Hole in the park. For the last three hours of 
this part of the journey, we were in the park limits; 
and in crossing the Madison Divide, we enjoyed the 
finest extended view to be found in the Yellowstone 
country. 

From Fire Hole Basin, we went to the Upper Geyser 
Basin, passing through " Hell's Half Acre," and visit- 
ing Excelsior Geyser, the largest in the world, but not 
now active; and returned to Fire Hole that night. 

The wonderful geysers are seen during this part of 
the journey — " Old Faithful," that, once an hour, spouts 
from three to five minutes, throwing a huge stream to 
the height of 150 feet; "The Castle," whose loud roar 
gives him a noisy reputation; "The Splendid," which, 
every three hours on alternate days, throws a stream 
200 feet high; and numerous others of lesser note. 

The following day we left Fire Hole, and, in a drive 
of three hours and a half, visited Gibbon Falls and 
Canon, Monument Geyser Basin, Gibbon Paint Pot 
Basin, taking dinner at Norris Basin; and, after a three 
hours' drive after dinner, reached Mammoth Hot 
Springs, where we found the largest hotel in the park. 
On our way, we passed Beaver Lake and the Volcanic 
Glass Cliffs, and through the Golden Gate, where the 
skill of an engineer has nailed the road to the side of 
the cliff. 

Returning the next day, we visited the Grand Canon 
and the Falls, and every one agreed with rne that they 
are by far the grandest sights in the park. 

The next morning we returned to Fire Hole ready 
to come out, having seen the park as it should be seen. 

54 



No one who is so near to the Yellowstone as Salt 
Lake City can afford to miss an opportunity to visit 
this wonderful spot. 

tin we thank you for helping' us to make a trip 
that will never be forgotten by any of us. 
(Signed) J. E. Hurlbut, 

Mi>> Hall, 
Miss Hi.odgett, 
Miss Merril, 
Miss Bakkr, 
Miss Hunt, 
Miss Mason, and others. 

(From Mr. George N. Smith, India.) 

Dear Sir: — Many thanks for your kindness and 
courtesies and that of your people from Beaver Canon, 
in and through the Yellowstone Park. The journey 
from the canon is through a very pleasant country and 
good road; the hotels on the way are patterns of clean- 
liness and good food; such mountain trout it has never 
been my good fortune to meet before; and as for the 
hostelry at Snake river, a sight of the picturesque 
location would pay for the journey if there was nothing 
more to be seen. You come upon it so unexpectedly; 
the river flows close to the door; behind, a dark green 
pine forest; beyond the river and the uplands, the 
giant mountains raise their snowy summits. But who 
can tell the wonders of the park? It was a true report 
I heard in my own country ( India); but the half was 
never told. Time would fail to tell, had I the ability, 
of the wonders of the geysers, the exquisite tints of 
the hot springs, the marvels of the " Formations," 
and last but not least, the combined grandeur and 
beauty of the Grand Canon of the Y'ellowstone; gallant 
"Old Faithful," ever ready to repay the tourist for his 
journey, by displaying his glorious inverted cataract. 
The others are rightly named: Grand, Splendid, 
Giantess, etc. But my affections cling to the " O. F." 
Listen, the sixty-five minutes are nearly up, wanting 
only four. Here comes the steam, then a couple of 
buckets of water; these premonitory symptoms are 
hardly given, when, look out, here it comes! Then 
Nature displays one of her superlatively grand exhibi- 
tions; a column of water 150 feet, instinct with life; 
wave after wave of water pursuing each other 
upwards in obedience to some mysterious law, 
setting gravitation at defiance. The Irishman 
who deprecated his friend's admiration of Niagara by 
exclaiming : "What's to prevent its descent !" would 
find himself at fault here. Clouds and streams 
envelop it, thunder accompanies it, and scattered 
from it 10,000 diamonds fall on every side ; but 
there, I must not belittle it by causing it to be 
imagined through the refracting medium of my 
description; it must be seen to be appreciated; it 
should be seen again and again till its grandeur 

55 




53 



fills the soul. I should be accused of exaggeration 
and romance if I attempted to tell of the coloring 
of the many springs — the Morning Glory, the Gem, 
the Emerald — so I give it up. 

I am exceedingly thankful that it fell to my fortune 
to see these wonders with my own eyes, and the whole 
made so pleasant by the amiability of all concerned in 
the transport. Yours truly, 

Geo. N. Smith. 

The Fourth Tour is from Pocatello to Butte and 
Helena and return. From Pocatello going due north 
we pass Beaver Canon, where connection by stage 
line is made for the Yellowstone National Park; a few 
miles bring the tourist within the confines of Montana. 
Passing the water line, Red Rock Station is the first 
point of interest. Here the scenery is wild, and 
there is a peculiar formation of points of jagged land, 
the highest of which is Red Rock, which juts up some 
500 feet, and maybe seen in either direction for twenty 
miles. Then through Dillon, which is in Beaver 
Head Valley, and one of the thriving towns of Mon- 
tana, Silver Bow is reached. From Silver Bow the 
Montana Union Railroad, an auxiliary line of the 
Union Pacific Railway, branches off, one spur running 
to Butte City, another through Stuart to Garrison, 
where connection is made for Helena, and still another 
from Stuart to Anaconda. 

BUTTE CITY. 

Butte City, with an elevation of 5,492 feet above 
sea-level, is the largest mining camp in the world, not 
even excepting Leadville, Colorado. Standing next 
to the Lake Superior regions in the production of 
copper, and first of all in silver output, attention has 
been drawn to it from all over the world. Butte has 
a population of some 25,000 people, is the possessor 
of fine hotels and all the modern conveniences of a 
large city. It is the greatest silver producer, not alone 
of Montana, but of the Rocky Mountain mineral belt. 
It is situated on a gentle slope, and is surrounded by 
rugged and beautiful scenery, and takes its name from 
the point known as the Big Butte, located just north 
of the original town. It is ten miles to the main range 
of the Rockies, but towering foothills have formed the 
basin where Butte flourishes. From Butte City, points 
of interest in Silver Bow, Jefferson and Madison 

57 




GARDINER RIVEk HOT SPRINGS, YELLOWSTONE NAT ONAL PARK. 
Reached via the Union Pacific Rv. 



58 



counties can be readily reached. Butte is a healthy 
place, and blessed with a pure and bracing atmosphere. 
Butte City presents many attractions to the tourist and 
health and pleasure seeker. 

ANACONDA. 

From Stuart, the Montana Union also has a branch 
to Anaconda. Here is located the largest smelting 
works in the world, the consumption of coal alone for 
these works being 300 tons per day, and the yield from 
copper ore is enormous. From Stuart, the pretty little 
town of Deer Lodge is but a short distance, and is a 
point of much interest. 

CARRISOX. 

Further on is Garrison, a place of note, being the 
junction of the Montana Union branch of the Union 
Pacific Railway with the Northern Pacific, and for- 
merly the transfer point of passengers going to Port- 
land' But since the opening of the Oregon Short 
Line, the Route is via Huntington, which is the direct 
line to Portland ;' the Garrison Route is used for 
Helena business. 

HELENA. 
Helena the capital of Montana, has an elevation of 
4,266 feet above the sea-level, and a population of 
about 20,000. Helena, besides being a great distrib- 
uting point, is also a mining camp, and is reached 
over the Union Pacific Railway, via Garrison, and the 
Northern Pacific Railroad. It is beautifully situated; 
Fort Benton to the north, Bozeman to the east, 
Virginia City to the south, with Butte City and Deer 
Lodge to the west. It has fine hotels, clubs, banks, 
newspapers, street cars— in fact everything that con- 
tributes to city life. 

The circumstances attending the birth of Helena 
are interesting. Four young miners whose names 
are not associated with the city's later history, 
in May, 1864, were wandering along the main 
range prospecting. They had been unable to obtain 
claims in Alder Gulch, and their objective point, in 
case they should fail to strike a rich field of their own, 
was Kootnai, in British Columbia, where common 
report located valuable diggings. They camped one 



night in the gulch, where Helena stands to-day, but. 
though they found '" color" they were not particularly 
pleased. They doubted if gold was there in anything 
like paying quantities. They pushed ahead, there- 
fore, crossed the range, and had gone as many as 
thirty miles northward when they encountered a man 
who dispelled their dreams of Kootnai. He said the 
good claims were all gone, and the best of them were 
poor, anyhow. This news was a great discouragement 
to the party. They had a rather dismal council, and 
concluded that the gulch they had lately left was their 
only hope. Accordingly, the next morning they 
turned around and came back to the spot upon 
which they had previously encamped. They grimly 
named the valley •'« Last Chance Gulch," and Last 
Chance Gulch it is to-day. They sank two holes to 
bedrock, and their hearts leaped high when they 
counted $3.60 in their first pan. Each of these four 
adventurers made a fortune from his claim, and soon 
a big camp was drawn together. One of the miners, 
who had been impressed with the fascinations of 
Homer's heroine, gallantly urged the name of Helena 
as most appropriate for the name of the new city, and 
Helena it became. 

It stands to-day in the bottoms where the Last 
Chance pilgrims made their first discoveries. A more 
absurd and yet more picturesque situation would be 
difficult to fancy. Its chief business thoroughfare 
lies directly in the bottom of the Last Chance Gulch; 
at the further end of which, the patient Chinaman is 
still washing out his pan of dirt and realizing a fortune 
larger than, in his own country, he had ever dreamed 
of achieving. Thirty millions were taken from Last 
Chance Gulch before it was abandoned to merchants 
and shopkeepers, and even now'the builder of a new 
house can find laborers willing to dig his cellar for the 
dirt they take from it. There are many attractions 
for the tourist. Mount Helena is to be climbed, and 
the view from its summit well repays the labor. There 
are pleasant drives, one of the most popular leading 
to Hot Springs, four miles away. Prickly Pear Canon 
presents attractive features. " The Gate of the Mount- 
ains, " where the Missouri river bursts through, infi- 
nitely surpasses the Hudson Highlands, and for 100 
miles down stream there is a succession of pillared 
hills, of castles, of eroded stone, of caves, and of falls. 
East of Helena are the White Sulphur Springs, Hell 

60 



Gate Caflon, and the Devil's Watch Tower. North- 
west is Flat Lake, twenty-eight by ten miles, and the 
Twin Cascades, Elizabeth and Alice, falling 2,000 feet. 
The return trip is made to Pocatello, where the tourist 
once more joins the Short Line Division of the Union 
Pacific. From here the journey is resumed to Oregon, 
the Dalles of the Columbia, Portland, Tacoma, and 
Alaska. 




61 



STANDARD PUBLICATIONS 



passenger department of the union 
Pacific Railway. 



The Passenger Department of the Union Pacific Railway will take 
pleasure in forwarding to any address, free of charge, any of the follow- 
ing publications, provided that with the application is enclosed the 
amount of postage specified below for each publication. All of these 
books and pamphlets are fresh from the press, many of them hand^ 
somely illustrated, and accurate as regards the region of country de- 
scribed. They will be found entertaining and instructive, and invaluable 
as guides to and authority on the fertile tracts and landscape wonders 
of the great empire of the West. There is information for the tourist 
pleasure and health seeker, the investor, the settler, the sportsman 
the artist, and the invalid. 

The Western Resort Book. Send 6 cents for postage. 

This is a finely illustrated book describing the vast Uni on Pacific system. 
Every health resort, mountain retreat, watering place, hunter's para- 
dise, etc., etc., is depicted. This book gives a full and complete 
detail of all tours over the line, starting from Sioux City, Council 
.Bluffs. Omaha, St. Joseph, Leavenworth, or Kansas City, and con- 
tains a complete itinerary of the journey from either of these points 
to the Pacific Coast. 

Sights and Scenes. Send 2 cents postage for each pamphlet. 

There are five pamphlets in this set, pocket folder size,, illustrated, 
and are descriptive of tours to particular points. The set comprises 
''Sights and Scenes in Colorado;" Utah; Idaho and Montana; Cali- 
fornia; Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. Er.ch pamphlet deals 
minutely with every resort of pleasure or health within its assigned 
limit, and will be found bright and interesting reading for tourists. 

Facts and Figures, Send 2 cents postage for'each pamphlet. 

This is a set of three pamphlets, containing facts and figures rela- 
tive to Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado respectively. They are more 
particularly meant for intending settlers in these fertile States and 
will be found accurate in every particular; there is a description of 
all important towns. 

Vest Pocket Memorandum Book. Send 2 cents for postage. 

A handy, neatly gotten-up litt'e memorandum book, very useful 
for the farmer, business man, traveler, and tourist. 

Calendar, 1890. Send 6 cents for postage. 

An elegant Calendar for the year 1890, suitable for the office and 
counting room. 

Comprehensive Pamphlets. Send 6 centspostage for each pamphlet. 
A set of pamphlets on Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho* ' 
Oregon, and Washington. These books treat of the resources, cli- 
mate, acreage, minerals, grasses, soil, and products of these various 
empires on an extended scale, entering very fully upon an exhaustive 
treatise of the capabilities and promise of the places described. 
They have been very carefully compiled, and the information 
collated from Official Reports, actual settlers, and residents of the 
different States and Territories. 

Theatrical Diary. Send 10 cents for postage. 

This is a Theatrical Diary for 1890-91, bound in Turkey Morocco 
gilt tops, and contains a list of 255 theatres and opera houses 
reached by the Union Pacific system, seating capacity, size of sta^e 
terms, newspapers in each town, etc., etc. This Diary is intended 
only for the theatrical profession. 

Commercial Salesman's Expense Book. Send 2 cents for postage. 
A neat vest pocket memorandum book for 1890— dates, cash accounts 
etc., etc. 

Outdoor Sports and Pastimes. Send 2 cents for postage. 

A carefully compiled pamphlet of some thirty pages, giving the 
complete rules of this year, for Lawn Tennis, Base Ball, Croquet, 
Racquet, Cricket, Quoits. La Crosse, Polo, Curling, Foot Ball, etc., 
etc. There are also diagrams of a Lawn Tennis Court and Base Ball 
diamond. This pamphlet will be found especially valuable to lovers of 
these games. 



Map of the United States. Send 95 cents for postage. 

V large wall map Of the United States, complete in every particular. 
and compiled from the latest surveys: jnst published; size, 40x150 
inches; railways, counties, roads, etc., etc. 

Stream, Sound and Sea. Send 2 rents toy postage. 

V neat, illustrated pamphlet descriptive of a trip from The Dalles; 
of the Columbia to Portland, ore.. Astoria, Clatsop Beach; through 
the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the watersof the Puget Sound, and 
up the. -oast to Alaska. A handsome pamphlet containing valuable 
information for the tourist. 

Wonderful Story. Send 9 cents lor postage. 

The romance of railway building. The wonderful story of the early 
surveys and the building of the Onion Pacific. A. paper by General (i. 
M. Dodge, read before the Society of tne Army ol the Tennessee, 
September, 1888. General Sherman pronounces this document fascin- 
atingly interesting and o\' greal historical value, and vouches for its 
accuracy. 

Gun Club Rules and Revised Game Laws. Send 2 cents for 
postage. 
This valuable publication is a digest of the laws relating to game in 
all the Western States and Territories. It also contains the various 
gun club rules, together with a guide to all Western localities where 
game of whatsoever description may be found. Every sportsman 
should have one. 

"The Oldest Inhabitant." Send 10 cents for postage. 

This is a buffalo head in Sepia, a very artistic study from life: It is 
characterize.! by strong drawing and wonderful fidelity. A very 
handsome acquisition for parlor or library. 

Crofutt's Overland Guide, No. 1. Send $1.00. 

This book has just been issued. It graphically describes every point, 
giviug its history, population, business resources, etc., etc., ou the 
line of the Union Pacific Railway, between the Missouri River and 
the Pacific Coast, and the tourist should not start West without a 
copy iu his possession. It furnishes in one volume a complete guide 
to the country traversed bv the Union Pacific system, and can not 
fail to be of great assistance to the tourist in selecting his route, 
and obtaining complete information about the points to be visited. 

A Glimpse of Great Salt Lake. Send 4 cents for postage. 

This is a charming description of a yachting cruise on the mysterious 
inland sea. beautifully illustrated with original sketches by the well- 
known artist. 'Sir. Alfred Lambourne, of Salt Lake City. The startling 
phenomena of sea and cloud and light and color are finely portrayed. 
This book touches a new region, a voyage on Great Salt Lake never 
before having been described and pictured. 

General Folder. No postage required. 

A carefully revised General Folder is issued regularly every month. 
This publication gives condensed through time tables; through car 
service; a first-class map of the United States, west of Chicago and 
St. Louis; important baggage and ticket regulations of the Union 
Pacific Railway, thus making a valuable compendium for the traveler 
and for ticket agent in selling through tickets over the Union Pacific 
Railway. 

. The Pathfinder. No postage required. 

A book of some fifty pages devoted to local time cards; containing a 
complete list of stations with the altitude of each; also connections 
with western Stage lines and ocean steamships; through car service; 
baggage and Pullman Sleeping Car rates and the principal ticket 
regulations, which will prove of great value as a ready reference for 
ticket agents to give passengers information about the local branches 
of the Union Pacific Railway. 

Alaska Folder. No postage required. 

This Folder contains a brief outline of the trip to Alaska, and also a 
correct map of the Northwest Pacific Coast, from Portland to Sitka, 
Alaska, showing the route of vessels to and from this new and almost 
unknown country. 



Idaho ^Montana. 




71 




rV 



^ifa^ 




J. W. SCOTT, E. L. LOMAX, 

Asst. Gen'l Pass'r Agt., Gen'l. Passenger Agent, 

OMAHA, NEB 

Q RAND, MCNALLY & CO., PRINTERS, CHICAGO. 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




016 086 778 4 • 



3fi* 






■ 



^m 



• rs*ntt 

















I 






1 ;»V. * 




I * I H 


' 






■ '*£>4C2|! 




*,«3 






' .ttrr. 












-i . 


■ n 








• 








1 .. - ...V 










■ '.'Jii«.t aC j \- ;*:..; 


T - x *» -..--;: , t4>9L«S 




--•• ^H 






^H ^1 


■ 



